gvsbuild

This python script helps you build a full GTK library stack for Windows using Visual Studio. Currently, GTK 3 and GTK 4 are supported.

The script supports multiple versions of Visual Studio - at the moment we are focusing on VS 2022, but we include projects for other versions, and we gladly accept patches.

The script focuses on GTK and the surrounding ecosystem (e.g. GStreamer). However, we are open to adding more libraries as long as the contributor takes on the responsibility for keeping it up to date. The supported projects are modules in the projects directory.

The script requires a working installation of Visual Studio for Windows Desktop, Python 3 and msys2. The script will download any additional tools required to build the libraries and will use them from a local directory, without any installation. As of today these tools include cmake, meson, ninja, nuget and perl.

The script fetches source tarballs for the projects from their original locations, however in some cases it might be necessary to host a patched tarball on GitHub. To ensure integrity of the downloaded files, the script checks the SHA256 hash of each download. Downloads are done using TLS, using SSL certificates provided by the system, but in case of error the download is tried again ignoring certificate errors.

Development Environment

Choco

We recommend using Chocolately as a package manager in Windows.

To install it, open PowerShell as an administrator, then execute:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

To run local scripts in follow-on steps, also execute Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned. This allows for local PowerShell scripts to run without signing, but still requires signing for remote scripts.

Git

To setup a development environment in Windows install Git by executing as an administrator:

choco install git

MSYS2

Both of the development environments in the next steps need MSYS2 installed.

Install MSYS2:

Keep PowerShell open as administrator and execute:

choco install msys2

Building GTK

First we will install the gvsbuild dependencies:

1. Visual C++ build tools workload for Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools
2. Python

Install Visual Studio 2022

With your admin PowerShell terminal:

choco install visualstudio2022-workload-vctools

Note: Visual Studio versions 2013 (not for all projects), 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2022 are currently supported.

Install the Latest Python

Download and install the latest version of Python:

1. Install from Chocolately with choco install python with admin PowerShell
2. Restart your PowerShell terminal as a normal user and check that python --version is correct.

Note: If you are going to install Python using an alternative means, like the official Windows installers, we suggest to install Python in C:\Python3x, for example C:\Python310. Other Python distributions like Miniconda 3 should also work.

Install gvsbuild

The recommended way to install gvsbuild is with pipx. Open a new regular user PowerShell terminal and execute:

python -m pip install --user pipx
python -m pipx ensurepath
pipx install gvsbuild

Alternatively, you can also use git to clone the repository and install it. Open a new regular user PowerShell terminal and execute:

mkdir C:\gtk-build\github
cd C:\gtk-build\github
git clone https://github.com/wingtk/gvsbuild.git
cd C:\gtk-build\github\gvsbuild
python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\activate.ps1
pip install .

Build GTK

In the same PowerShell terminal, execute:

gvsbuild build gtk3

Alternatively, if you want to build GTK 4, execute:

gvsbuild build gtk4

Grab a coffee, the build will take a few minutes to complete.

Add GTK to Your Environmental Variables

$env:Path = "C:\gtk-build\gtk\x64\release\bin;" + $env:Path
$env:LIB = "C:\gtk-build\gtk\x64\release\lib;" + $env:LIB
$env:INCLUDE = "C:\gtk-build\gtk\x64\release\include;C:\gtk-build\gtk\x64\release\include\cairo;C:\gtk-build\gtk\x64\release\include\glib-2.0;C:\gtk-build\gtk\x64\release\include\gobject-introspection-1.0;C:\gtk-build\gtk\x64\release\lib\glib-2.0\include;" + $env:INCLUDE

Use PyGObject

Add the --enable-gi and --py-wheel options like:

gvsbuild build --enable-gi --py-wheel gtk4 pygobject

Once that finishes, then you need to use the gvsbuild generated wheels with your Python virtualenv in order to work around this PyGObject bug:

pip install --force-reinstall (Resolve-Path C:\gtk-build\build\x64\release\pygobject\dist\PyGObject*.whl)
pip install --force-reinstall (Resolve-Path C:\gtk-build\build\x64\release\pycairo\dist\pycairo*.whl)

Other Options

For more information about the possible commands run:

gvsbuild --help

To get detailed help on the build command run:

gvsbuild build --help

It is possible to set some parameters from a file, e.g. vs2015-release.pro, putting the @ character before the file name. The file contains the option, one per line, separated by a carriage return:

--vs-ver
14
--win-sdk
8.1
--configuration
release

Even if the format is not the easier to write or read in this way we eliminate the problem of escaping spaces is file names and directories. Then you can use it:

gvsbuild build @vs2015-release.pro gtk3-full

Troubleshooting

• If a build fails, try rebuilding it with --clean, if that fails, try rebuilding it with --from-scratch
• If the download of a tarball fails a partial file will not pass the hash check, delete the file and try again.

OpenSSL

In addition to the setup instructions above, to build OpenSSL you also need the Visual C++ 2013 Redistributable Package installed. To install it, open PowerShell as administrator and execute:

choco install vcredist2013

Similar to other packages, you can build OpenSSL by executing:

gvsbuild build openssl

Dependency Graph

To see and analyze the dependency between the various projects, in text or in a Graphviz format, use the script deps.py:

gvsbuild deps --graph --gv-file test.gv

Without option a simple dependency of all the projects is printed, as usual with --help a summary of the options/commands is printed.

License

This build script is licensed under the GPL2.0 license, see the COPYING file for the full text.

The binaries produced by the build script are licensed under the license terms of the project that is built (ie glib is LGPL so you can use glib.dll built with this script under the terms of LGPL).

Patches included in the repository are licensed under the license terms of the project they apply to.

Credits

This tool originated from a gtk-win32 PowerShell script created by the HexChat developers for building it for Windows. Although this project is now archived, you can explore the original project if you are interested in the history at https://github.com/hexchat/gtk-win32.

Compiling the GTK stack on MSVC would not be possible without the incredible work by Fan Chun-wei. If you are interested in more details of how this works, please see Compiling the GTK+ (and Clutter) stack using Visual C++ 2008 and later.