We strongly recommend that Dev-C++ is installed and tested before installing any of the GTK+ or gtkmm libraries, as we will be installing all the libraries into the Dev-C++ directory. Ensure that you are able to successfully compile and run a simple C++ program from Dev-C++ before proceeding to the next step. For instance, try a simple Hello World program.

Note: Currently (as of v4.9.8.0) Dev-C++ does not like to be installed in directories with spaces in them. Installing Dev-C++ to the "Program Files" directory may cause problems at a later stage when it looks for the include and lib directories.

The gtkmm Windows installer requires you to first install the following dependencies:

Now you are ready to install gtkmm. You can find a link to an installer on the gtkmm web site's download page. The gtkmm Windows installer includes both the development and the runtime files.

Since we are going to be using Dev-C++ as our IDE, it is strongly suggested that you install gtkmm into the base Dev-C++ directory (ie. d:\dev-cpp). This will make things easier later on when setting up the include and lib directories in Dev-C++.

You should now be ready to execute Win32 gtkmm compiled binaries. Note: Some older versions of Windows may require a reboot before the installer's change to the PATH variable takes effect.

Now we need to set some project options to create our first gtkmm project in Dev-C++.

First, we need to let Dev-C++ know what files and libraries to include when it invokes MingW/GCC3.2. To find out what arguments need to be passed to GCC, we need to open a command prompt and type the following:

pkg-config --cflags gtkmm-2.4

If the pkg-config command cannot be found, you can cd to the bin/ directory of where you installed Dev-C++ and execute the above line from there. Depending on where you installed gtkmm, you will get output that looks similar to the following:

	    -Id:/dev-c++/include/gtkmm-2.4
	    -Id:/dev-c++/lib/gtkmm-2.4/include
	    -Id:/dev-c++/include/gtk-2.0
	    -Id:/dev-c++/lib/sigc++-2.0/include
	    -Id:/dev-c++/include/sigc++-2.0
	    -Id:/dev-c++/include/glib-2.0
	    -Id:/dev-c++/lib/glib-2.0/include
	    -Id:/dev-c++/lib/gtk-2.0/include
	    -Id:/dev-c++/include/pango-1.0 -Id:/dev-c++/include/atk-1.0
	    -Ld:/dev-c++/lib 
	  

The next step is to obtain the list of libraries by issuing the following command:

pkg-config --libs gtkmm-2.4

Your results may look something similar to this:

	    -lgtkmm-2.4 -lgdkmm-2.4 -latkmm-1.0
	    -lgtk-win32-2.0 -lpangomm-1.4 -lglibmm-2.4 -lsigc-2.0
	    -lgdk-win32-2.0 -latk-1.0 -lgdk_pixbuf-2.0 -lpangowin32-1.0
	    -lgdi32 -lpango-1.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lgmodule-2.0 -lglib-2.0
	    -lintl -liconv
	  

Now create a new Project. We will make this project work with gtkmm. After creating a new project, select Project Options from the menu, and under the Parameters tab, we will need to enter the information we obtained earlier: In the Additional commandline options for the C++ compiler, paste the include and lib directories you obtained with the --cflags argument. (The commandline options preceeded by either an -I or a -L).

Now we must tell the linker what libraries to include, by pasting the libraries into the Additional commandline options for the Linker. (These commandline options are preceeded by a -l).

Congratulations. You have successfully created a new project in Dev-C++ that works with gtkmm. Try compiling some of the examples in this tutorial.