When developing projects using the Glade user interface designer and GTK+ 3, the Glade application and the GTK library must be installed on the development computer. This article shows how to install these components on a Debian based Linux distribution such as Linux Mint or Ubuntu. Installing GTK 3 and Glade development tools in Linux from the command line is described in the sections below.
Installing Glade
To install Glade, enter the following on the command line in a terminal window:
sudo apt-get install glade
The following was installed on my Linux Mint 17.2 computer:
The following extra packages will be installed: libgladeui-2-6 libgladeui-common Recommended packages: devhelp The following NEW packages will be installed: glade libgladeui-2-6 libgladeui-common
After installation Glade can be started from the desktop menu under Menu → Programming → Glade as shown in the image below for a Linux Mint computer.
This installed Glade version 3.16.1.
Installing the GTK+ 3 Development Library
GTK development library files must be installed in order to be able to develop and compile GTK applications. Install the GTK+ 3 library files using the following command in a terminal window.
sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev
The following files were installed on my Linux Mint 17.2 computer.
The following extra packages will be installed: libatk-bridge2.0-dev libatk1.0-dev libcairo-script-interpreter2 libcairo2-dev libexpat1-dev libfontconfig1-dev libfreetype6-dev libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev libglib2.0-dev libharfbuzz-dev libharfbuzz-gobject0 libice-dev libpango1.0-dev libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libpixman-1-dev libpng12-dev libsm-dev libwayland-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-shm0-dev libxcomposite-dev libxcursor-dev libxdamage-dev libxext-dev libxfixes-dev libxft-dev libxi-dev libxinerama-dev libxkbcommon-dev libxrandr-dev libxrender-dev x11proto-composite-dev x11proto-damage-dev x11proto-fixes-dev x11proto-randr-dev x11proto-render-dev x11proto-xext-dev x11proto-xinerama-dev zlib1g-dev Suggested packages: libcairo2-doc libglib2.0-doc libgtk-3-doc libice-doc libpango1.0-doc imagemagick libsm-doc libxext-doc Recommended packages: debhelper The following NEW packages will be installed: libatk-bridge2.0-dev libatk1.0-dev libcairo-script-interpreter2 libcairo2-dev libexpat1-dev libfontconfig1-dev libfreetype6-dev libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev libglib2.0-dev libgtk-3-dev libharfbuzz-dev libharfbuzz-gobject0 libice-dev libpango1.0-dev libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libpixman-1-dev libpng12-dev libsm-dev libwayland-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-shm0-dev libxcomposite-dev libxcursor-dev libxdamage-dev libxext-dev libxfixes-dev libxft-dev libxi-dev libxinerama-dev libxkbcommon-dev libxrandr-dev libxrender-dev x11proto-composite-dev x11proto-damage-dev x11proto-fixes-dev x11proto-randr-dev x11proto-render-dev x11proto-xext-dev x11proto-xinerama-dev zlib1g-dev 0 upgraded, 41 newly installed, 0 to remove and 27 not upgraded. Need to get 6 583 kB of archives.
Installing a Text Editor
After installing GTK 3 and Glade development tools, your computer should be set up for developing applications using GTK+ 3 and Glade. You may also want to install a text editor such as Geany which is very useful when developing software as it provides syntax highlighting for a large number of programming languages as well as other useful functionality for programmers.
Installing Geany from the command line:
sudo apt-get install geany
Geany is available on the Linux Mint Menu under Menu → Programming → Geany
I had tried a couple of different web based installation instructions. I just made a bigger mess. You are direct, to the point, and current. I am now in action.
Thank you very much! This got me up and running in no time.
Would GTK ever “automatically” install on my computer? I’m not a developer and my soon to be ex husband is a hacker – is this linked to remote hacking?
libgtk-3-dev is the GTK 3 development library, it usually isn’t installed by default. It hasn’t got anything to do with hacking, but any software that has vulnerabilities could potentially be hacked.
Thanks for the nice and simple instruction.
So if someone just wanted the GTK+ runtimes, but not the development environment, they would instead type
sudo apt-get install libgtk-3?
I did the steps above on Ubuntu 18.04. Glade starts OK via the programs->glade menu or if I type “glade” into a terminal window. However, when I do the latter, I also get 8 error messages like this:
GladeUI-Message: 21:54:08.952: 1 missing displayable value for GtkWidget::events
GladeUI-Message: 21:54:09.301: Glade needs artwork; a default icon will be used for the following classes:
GtkApplicationWindow needs an icon named ‘widget-gtk-applicationwindow’
GThemedIcon needs an icon named ‘widget-gtk-themedicon’
WebKitWebView needs an icon named ‘widget-webkit2gtk-webview’
WebKitSettings needs an icon named ‘widget-webkit2gtk-settings’
etc. How do I install the things it is asking for?
Same here… Trying to get it working under Ubuntu Mate 19.04. No luck so far… I’m not sure if this has anything to do with Mate and that I need to have a real Gnome desktop or something. All this “freedom of Choices” bites me in the butt when I’m trying to get something constructive done using Linux. Even tried the different Windows managers like Marco adaptive and Marco & Compton. (I’m using the separate Nvidia card in my laptop). Anyway, I think it’s a Gnome related thing. (Being the absence of Gnome parts in Mate).
Someone any wise ideas?
After typing glade at the CLI the glade GUI opens, but the panels or panes are not populated. Here’s the result on the CLI:
GladeUI-Message: 13:49:04.444: 1 missing displayable value for GtkWidget::events
GladeUI-Message: 13:49:04.445: 1 missing displayable value for GtkWidget::AtkObject::accessible-role
GladeUI-Message: 13:49:04.525: 2 missing displayable value for GtkEntry::input-hints
GladeUI-Message: 13:49:04.652: No displayable values for property GtkMenu::anchor-hints
GladeUI-Message: 13:49:04.699: 2 missing displayable value for GtkAboutDialog::license-type
GladeUI-Message: 13:49:04.792: 1 missing displayable value for GtkCellRendererAccel::accel-mode
GladeUI-Message: 13:49:04.867: No displayable values for property WebKitSettings::hardware-acceleration-policy
GladeUI-Message: 13:49:04.867: Glade needs artwork; a default icon will be used for the following classes:
WebKitWebView needs an icon named ‘widget-webkit2gtk-webview’
GThemedIcon needs an icon named ‘widget-gtk-themedicon’
GtkApplicationWindow needs an icon named ‘widget-gtk-applicationwindow’
WebKitSettings needs an icon named ‘widget-webkit2gtk-settings’