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:
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sudo apt-get install glade |
The following was installed on my Linux Mint 17.2 computer:
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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.
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sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev |
The following files were installed on my Linux Mint 17.2 computer.
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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:
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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?