Working with gtkmm's Source Code
If you are interested in helping out with the development of gtkmm, or fixing a bug in gtkmm, you'll probably need to build the development version of gtkmm. However, you should not install a development version over your stable version. Instead, you should install it alongside your existing gtkmm installation, in a separate path.
The easiest way to do this is using jhbuild. jhbuild is a program that makes building GNOME software much easier by calculating dependencies and building things in the correct order. This section will give a brief explanation of how to set up jhbuild to build and install gtkmm from the source repository (git). For up-to-date information on jhbuild, please refer to the jhbuild manual. If you need assistance using jhbuild, you should ask for help on the gnome-love mailing list.
Note that to build gtkmm from git, you'll often need to build all of its dependencies from git as well. jhbuild makes this easier than it would normally be, but it will take quite a while to build and install them all. You will probably encounter build problems, though these will usually be corrected quickly if you report them.