How to use GTK C library on Windows 10? - c

Question

I've recently tried installing the gtk library and encountered many problems. Firstly i tried using it on VScode and yet it always shows the same error:
test.c:2:10: fatal error: gtk/gtk.h: No such file or directory
2 | #include <gtk/gtk.h>
| ^~~~~~~~~~~
I've tried configuring c_cpp_properties.json to manually add the paths:
{
"configurations": [
{
"name": "Win32",
"includePath": [
"${default}",
"C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\lib\\**",
"C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\include\\**",
"C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\include\\gtk-3.0",
"C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\include\\gtk-3.0\\gtk",
"C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\include\\glib-2.0",
"C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\include\\pango-1.0",
"C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\include\\harfbuzz",
"C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\include\\cairo",
"C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\include\\gdk-pixbuf-2.0",
"C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\include\\atk-1.0",
"C:\\Users\\Acer\\Code\\vcpkg\\packages\\gtk_x64-windows\\lib",
"C:\\Users\\Acer\\Code\\vcpkg\\packages\\gtk_x64-windows\\include\\gtk-4.0\\**",
"C:\\Users\\Acer\\Code\\vcpkg\\installed\\x64-windows\\lib"
],
"defines": [
"_DEBUG",
"UNICODE",
"_UNICODE"
],
"windowsSdkVersion": "10.0.19041.0",
"compilerPath": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\2019\\Community\\VC\\Tools\\MSVC\\14.29.30133\\bin\\Hostx64\\x64\\cl.exe",
"cStandard": "c17",
"cppStandard": "c++17",
"intelliSenseMode": "windows-msvc-x64"
}
],
"version": 4
}
Although the ridicule lenght (beware that i've tried every combination possible of these paths: different order, with more, with less, etc...), these still didn't work.
As you should have noticed i've downloaded gtk via msys64 and vcpkg, the reason being that i then tried running on the Visual Studio IDE, which also didn't work:
E1696: cannot open source file "gtk/gtk.h"
(I thought it might not be recognizing vcpkg path yet changing it still didn't work, neither trying to compile on x64 or x86).
Lastly i tried compiling it myself on gcc:
gcc test.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs gtk+-3.0`
And got the following errors:
gcc.exe: error: pkg-config: No such file or directory
gcc.exe: error: gtk+-3.0`: No such file or directory
gcc.exe: error: unrecognized command line option '--cflags'
gcc.exe: error: unrecognized command line option '--libs'
Changing the command to this variation made it at least give the same error as VSCode:
gcc $(pkg-config --cflags gtk+-3.0) test.c $(pkg-config --libs gtk+-3.0)
I then called pkg-config to see the path that it would show:
pkg-config --cflags --libs gtk+-3.0
-IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../include/gtk-3.0 -IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../include/pango-1.0 -IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../include -IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../include/glib-2.0 -IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../lib/glib-2.0/include -IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../include/harfbuzz -IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../include/freetype2 -IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../include/libpng16 -mms-bitfields -IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../include/fribidi -IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../include/cairo -IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../include/lzo -IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../include/pixman-1 -mms-bitfields -mms-bitfields -mms-bitfields -mms-bitfields -mms-bitfields -mms-bitfields -mms-bitfields -IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../include/gdk-pixbuf-2.0 -mms-bitfields -mms-bitfields -mms-bitfields -IC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../include/atk-1.0 -mms-bitfields -mms-bitfields -mms-bitfields -pthread -mms-bitfields -LC:/msys64/mingw64/bin/../lib -lgtk-3 -lgdk-3 -lz -lgdi32 -limm32 -lshell32 -lole32 -Wl,-luuid -lwinmm -ldwmapi -lsetupapi -lcfgmgr32 -lpangowin32-1.0 -lpangocairo-1.0 -lpango-1.0 -lharfbuzz -latk-1.0 -lcairo-gobject -lcairo -lgdk_pixbuf-2.0 -lgio-2.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0 -lintl
Then tried passing that directly to gcc and got the following error:
On line:1 character:942
+ ... ib -lgtk-3 -lgdk-3 -lz -lgdi32 -limm32 -lshell32 -lole32 -Wl,-luuid - ...
+ ~
Argument missing from list of parameters.
+ CategoryInfo : ParserError: (:) [], ParentContainsErrorRecordException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : MissingArgument
Wonderful. I then tried adding that to my Path on the system variables. It did not work. Also made sure that all previous paths mentioned before were also there. Nothing works.(Should also mention than other than having multiple gtk+-3.0 installations on my computer one of which is found by pkg-config, i've also installed gtk+-4.0 via vcpkg, this one is not found by pkg-config).
Other than finding out how to finally use gtk on my pc, i would like, if possible, to known what did i do horribly wrong in each of the tries above so that none of them worked.
Thank You.