A simple 'hello-world' app using SwiftGtk
Make sure you have all the prerequisites installed (see below). After that, you can simply clone this repository and build the command line executable (be patient, this will download all the required dependencies and take a while to compile) using
git clone https://github.com/rhx/SwiftHelloGtk.git
cd SwiftHelloGtk
swift run
Alternatively, you can just build the program and run manually using
swift build
.build/debug/HelloGtk
On macOS you can also create an App bundle that you can move to your /Applications
folder and double-click by running the following script:
./app-bundle.sh
This will create a HelloGtk.app
inside the .build/app/
folder.
Please note that on macOS, due to a bug currently in the Swift Package Manager,
you need to pass in the build flags manually, i.e. instead of swift build
and swift run
you can run
swift build `./run-gir2swift.sh flags -noUpdate`
swift run `./run-gir2swift.sh flags -noUpdate`
Under macOS, you can also create an Application bundle that you can copy to the /Applications
folder by using
./app-bundle.sh
On macOS, you can build the project using Xcode instead. To do this, you need to create an Xcode project first, then open the project in the Xcode IDE:
./xcodegen.sh
open HelloGtk.xcodeproj
After that, select the executable target (not the Bundle/Framework target with the same name as the executable) and use the (usual) Build and Run buttons to build/run your project.
There now is a gtk4
branch supporting the latest version of gtk.
The current version introduces a new build system and signal generation code contributed by Mikoláš Stuchlík (see the Building and Running Section above).
Version 11 introduces a new type system into gir2swift
,
to ensure it has a representation of the underlying types.
This is necessary for Swift 5.3 onwards, which requires more stringent casts.
As a consequence, accessors can accept and return idiomatic Swift rather than
underlying types or pointers.
This means that a lot of the changes will be source-breaking for code that
was compiled against libraries built with earlier versions of gir2swift
.
- Requires Swift 5.6 or later
- Wrapper code is now
@inlinable
to enable the compiler to optimise away most of the wrappers - Parameters and return types use more idiomatic Swift (e.g.
Ref
wrappers instead of pointers,Int
instead ofgint
, etc.) - Functions that take or return records now are templated instead of using the type-erased Protocol
ErrorType
has been renamedGLibError
to ensure it neither clashes withSwift.Error
nor theGLib.ErrorType
scanner enum- Parameters or return types for records/classes now use the corresponding, lightweight Swift
Ref
wrapper instead of the underlying pointer
Building should work with at least Swift 5.6. You can download Swift from https://swift.org/download/ -- if you are using macOS, make sure you have the command line tools installed as well (install them using xcode-select --install
). Test that your compiler works using swift --version
, which should give you something like
$ swift --version
swift-driver version: 1.75.2 Apple Swift version 5.8 (swiftlang-5.8.0.124.2 clang-1403.0.22.11.100)
Target: arm64-apple-macosx13.0
on macOS, or on Linux you should get something like:
$ swift --version
Swift version 5.8.1 (swift-5.8.1-RELEASE)
Target: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
The Swift wrappers have been tested with glib-2.56, 2.58, 2.60, 2.62, 2.64, 2.66, 2.68, 2.70 and 2.72, and gdk/gtk 3.22 and 3.24, as well as 4.0, 4.2, 4.4 and 4.6 on the gtk4
branch. They should work with higher versions, but YMMV. Also make sure you have gobject-introspection
and its .gir
files installed.
On Ubuntu 18.04 and 16.04 you can use the gtk that comes with the distribution. Just install with the apt
package manager:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev gir1.2-gtksource-3.0 gobject-introspection libgirepository1.0-dev libxml2-dev
On Fedora 29, you can use the gtk that comes with the distribution. Just install with the dnf
package manager:
sudo dnf install gtk3-devel pango-devel cairo-devel cairo-gobject-devel glib2-devel gobject-introspection-devel libxml2-devel
On macOS, you can install gtk using HomeBrew (for setup instructions, see http://brew.sh). Once you have a running HomeBrew installation, you can use it to install a native version of gtk:
brew update
brew install gtk+3 glib glib-networking gobject-introspection pkg-config
Here are some common errors you might encounter and how to fix them.
If you get an error such as
$ ./build.sh
error: unable to invoke subcommand: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/swift-package (No such file or directory)
this probably means that your Swift toolchain is too old. Make sure the latest toolchain is the one that is found when you run the Swift compiler (see above).
If you get an older version, make sure that the right version of the swift compiler is found first in your PATH
. On macOS, use xcode-select to select and install the latest version, e.g.:
sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app
xcode-select --install