gvsbuild

This python script helps you build a full GTK library stack for Windows using Visual Studio.

The script supports multiple versions of Visual Studio - at the moment we are focusing on VS 2019, 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 pretty liberal about adding more libraries to the script, with the disclaimer that each contributor is responsible for keeping the additional libraries up to date. For now the list of projects is simply defined in the projects.py file. If the number of libraries increases, we will consider making this more configurable and easily extensible.

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 2019 Build Tools
2. Python

Install Visual Studio 2019

With your admin PowerShell terminal:

choco install visualstudio2019-workload-vctools

Note: Visual Studio versions 2013 (not for all projects), 2015, 2017, and 2019 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. Alternatively you can use the --python-dir option to tell the script the correct location of your Python installation. Other Python distributions like Miniconda 3 should also work.

Install gvsbuild

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

Build GTK

In the same PowerShell terminal, execute:

cd C:\gtk-build\github\gvsbuild
python .\build.py build -p=x64 --vs-ver=16 --msys-dir=C:\tools\msys64 --gtk3-ver=3.24 gtk3

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

Add GTK to Your Path

$env:Path = "C:\gtk-build\gtk\x64\release\bin;" + $env:Path

Other Options

To build the 64-bit version with the Visual Studio 2019 (version 16) you need also to tell the script the visual studio version, run:

cd C:\gtk-build\github\gvsbuild
python .\build.py build -p x64 --vs-ver 16 gtk3

For more information about the possible commands run:

python .\build.py --help

To get detailed help on the build command run:

python .\build.py build --help

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
-c
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:

python .\build.py build @vs2015-release.pro gtk3-full

For a complete list of the options accepted by the build command, run:

python .\build.py build --help

Troubleshooting

If the download of a tarball fails a partial file will not pass the hash check. Delete the file and try again.

Dependency Graph

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

cd C:\gtk-build\github\gvsbuild
python .\deps.py -g -o 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 gets 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 powershell developed by the HexChat developers, make sure to check their page for more information about the original script.

Compiling the GTK stack on MSVC would not be possible without the incredible work by Fan Chun-wei - Check the Compiling the GTK+ (and Clutter) stack using Visual C++ 2008 and later for more information on how this works.