I am working through the gtkmm documentation. I have started by trying to compile the "Simple Example". Here is the code. It can also be found here.
/// SimpleExample.cpp
#include <gtkmm.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
auto app =
Gtk::Application::create(argc, argv,
"org.gtkmm.examples.base");
Gtk::Window window;
window.set_default_size(200, 200);
return app->run(window);
}
I have tried to compile this using
g++ SimpleExample.cpp -o SimpleExample `pkg-config gtkmm-3.0 --cflags --libs`
which should work according to the documentation. (See end of linked page.)
Running pkg-config gtkmm-3.0 --cflags --libs produces
Package gtkmm-3.0 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gtkmm-3.0.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'gtkmm-3.0' found
I am running Debian 9 Stretch. I installed gtkmm with
sudo apt update && sudo apt install libgtkmm-3.0-dev
Running find /usr -name "gtkmm" produces
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/gtkmm-3.0.pc
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gtkmm-3.0
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gtkmm-3.0/include/gtkmmconfig.h
/usr/include/gtkmm-3.0
/usr/include/gtkmm-3.0/gtkmm
/usr/include/gtkmm-3.0/gtkmm.h
So why does the example not compile?
Updates:
New terminal
pkg-config gtkmm-3.0 --cflags --libs
Package gtkmm-3.0 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gtkmm-3.0.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'gtkmm-3.0' found
Try
find /usr -name "*gtkmm-3.0*"
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/gtkmm-3.0.pc
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtkmm-3.0.so.1.1.0
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtkmm-3.0.so.1
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gtkmm-3.0
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtkmm-3.0.so
/usr/share/doc/libgtkmm-3.0-1v5
/usr/share/doc/libgtkmm-3.0-dev
/usr/include/gtkmm-3.0
Export location
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig"
Re-run
pkg-config gtkmm-3.0 --cflags --libs
Package xproto was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `xproto.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
Package 'xproto', required by 'xau', not found
(That's a different error this time.)
Try to find again
find /usr -name "*xproto*"
/usr/share/pkgconfig/xproto.pc
/usr/include/xcb/xproto.h
/usr/include/GL/glxproto.h
/usr/include/X11/extensions/lbxproto.h
Change export command
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig;/usr/share/pkgconfig"
Re-run, back to square 1
pkg-config gtkmm-3.0 --cflags --libs
Package gtkmm-3.0 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gtkmm-3.0.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'gtkmm-3.0' found
Problem resolved (sort ot)
I have discovered from reading this question that the path should be colon seperated.
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig:/usr/share/pkgconfig"
However this does not solve the problem of why this variable needs to be set at all. pkg-config is used because it is supposed to make compilation simpler, however this isn't any more simple than specifying the include paths manually, as multiple environment variables need to be set.
In addition, the lack of information about this issue online makes me suspect that this is an issue which most users do not encounter, and therefore is probably specific to Debian 9. (I would like to know if anyone else has encounted this problem, and on what OS.)
