I have taken a look at GTK+3 and I like it. But unfortunately compiling from source has never worked for me. Is there any okace with decent binaries or even better, a windows installer?
5 Answers
2020-03-19 update:
GTK+ dropped the + and their website has been rewritten. So the install instructions for GTK on Windows are now at https://www.gtk.org/docs/installations/windows/
2017-04-07 update:
To make it clear, since 2017-06-23, the GTK+ project doesn't provide binary bundles for Windows. These are now provided by the MSYS2 project, with the blessing of the GTK+ team.
MSYS2 provides the most up-to-date versions of GTK+ for Windows, as well as a complete toolchain, and other useful GTK-related development tools like:
- Glade, the GUI designer
- Devhelp, the offline documentation browser
The official GTK+ website contains GTK+ installation instructions for Windows.
2013-10-27 update:
There's now an officially supported version of GTK 3 for Windows (GTK 3.6.4 as of today). You'll find it on the official GTK+ website, in the Downloads section. Thanks to the GTK team, and to tarnyko for his work in this regard.
2013-02-01 update:
There's a French dude (tarnyko) providing an (unofficial) GTK 3 installer for Windows, based on the OpenSUSE binaries, and another guy providing another (unofficial, again) build. Might help. The gtk-list mailing list is the best place to check how this evolves through time.
2011-05-15 original content:
There is currently no installer for GTK3 on Windows. However, the OpenSUSE Build System provides the Windows binaries for GTK3. On a GTK3 on Windows thread of the GTK devel mailing list, Maarten Bosmans provided the download-mingw-rpm.py python script, which automates the download of a package and its dependencies, and then uses 7-zip to unzip the content of the packages. See the post he explains how to use download-mingw-rpm.py.

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8The downloaded result looks terrible and it is far far away from the convenience of the previously provided binary builds. If this is the only way - then calling it a platform independent toolkit is an euphemism. – Lothar May 17 '11 at 01:28
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1GTK3 is pretty new, and the GTK+ for Windows maintainer has recently stopped his activity... Nobody stepped forward to create a new installer for the moment, so GTK3 on Windows works, but I admit that installation on Windows is difficult for the time being. – liberforce May 18 '11 at 12:15
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1Gave another try today and downloaded with that script the whole thing. It installs nicely in fact, with python >= python 3.2 (3.0 failed for me), and a recent version of 7-zip. However, running gtk3-demo was a bit disapointing, as I had a good amount of crashes. I still need to sort out if it's my installation that is at fault, gtk3-demo, or GTK3 itself. – liberforce May 18 '11 at 15:31
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1The python script is not working with python 2.6.6, i guess i should install 3.2 then. It does seem disappointing that an awesome cross-platform toolkit like Gtk has almost no , or incomplete windows binaries. I am currently trying the OpenSuse build. Thanks all. :) – ApprenticeHacker Jun 03 '11 at 10:07
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As I said just above, it requires at least python 3.2... – liberforce Jun 05 '11 at 20:49
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Some [GTK on Windows](http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2011/11/25/gtk-work-on-windows) development happened. For GTK2, the best release for the time being is now GTK 2.24.8, and some GTK3 fixes should appear in GTK 3.6. – liberforce Dec 06 '11 at 11:39
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These windows binaries are definitly not stable. I've tested them on my code, but even the gtk-demo crashes if you click to much. – LittleFunnyMan Dec 08 '11 at 20:30
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Which binaries are you taking about (version) ? – liberforce Dec 09 '11 at 15:16
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Looks like it might be solved in a few month, as 3.4 contains a lot. And again i was more realistic then most young OSS Fanboys - i predicted it will take upto 2 years until ported to Windows, it's now 13 month. – Lothar Apr 08 '12 at 01:37
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I was wrong, it's still not solved and it's now 6 years later. – Lothar Apr 06 '17 at 15:48
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What lets you think it's not solved ? I've been playing with GTK on Windows for the last month. Those are pre-compiled binaries installed using MSYS2. – liberforce Apr 07 '17 at 11:45
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Or you're talking about the stability ? – liberforce Apr 07 '17 at 12:57
It seems that proper Windows port is coming soon. According to this gnome developer blogpost:
http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2011/11/25/gtk-work-on-windows/
and it's comment section, Windows binaries should be available in near time.

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Thank God. In desperation, I had resorted to Java Swing. Now I can finally return to good old GTK. – ApprenticeHacker Dec 08 '11 at 16:00
There's a GTK+ 3.4.2 Windows binary installer available here :
http://www.tarnyko.net/?q=node/1
With a development version containing libraries, headers, MinGW & Vala compilers at the bottom.

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I'm sharing the latest GTK+ and gtkmm binaries for Windows 32-bit through DropBox. Take a look. 3.22.0 for GTK+ and 3.22.0 for gtkmm as of today.

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I'm interested to know how you produced these binaries. Can you share so I can do compilation magic of my own? – Jul 27 '14 at 07:28
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@Relish Of course. Click [here](https://github.com/Wesley-Chan/GTK-for-Windows). – Wesley Aug 06 '14 at 04:03
This one is even fatter and wholesome, but targeted for pygi. GTK is version 3.6.4 http://opensourcepack.blogspot.com/p/pygobject-pygi-aio.html. BTW i'm former windows build mypaint maintainer which migrate to pygobject 3. Also for MinGW i'm providing the most badass MinGW distro http://opensourcepack.blogspot.com/p/tuma-mingw.html

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