Gtk.NET

A minimal idiomatic C# wrapper around GTK and the GObject type system.

EDIT 19/08/2020: This wrapper was largely successful at what it was trying to do, and many of the lessons learnt are helping shape the API for gir.core. Please consider contributing there instead.

Example

An up to date example of what is possible with the library. Please be aware that function calls are being manually implemented at the moment to focus on control flow between C# and GTK. Therefore, only a very limited subset of widgets and methods are available.

using System;

using GLib;
using Gtk;

public class MyWindow : Window
{
    public MyWindow()
    {
        this.SetTitle("GTK.NET Demo 2");
        this.DefaultWidth = 800;
        this.DefaultHeight = 600;

        this.Destroy += OnDestroy;

        Button btn = new Button("Another Button!");
        btn.Clicked += OnButtonClick;
        
        Add(btn);
        ShowAll();
    }

    void OnDestroy(object sender, DestroySignalArgs e)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Guten Tag!");
        Global.GtkMainQuit();
    }

    void OnButtonClick(object sender, SignalArgs e)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Hello Inheritance!");
    }
}

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Global.GtkInit();

        MyWindow win = new MyWindow();
        win.Present();
        
        Global.GtkMain();
    }
}

Rationale

GtkSharp is generated using a codegen tool called GAPI. Modern GTK bindings should ideally be generated using the gobject-introspection infrastructure.

This is an attempt to rewrite GtkSharp in a way that is easier to maintain, while still providing the complete GTK feature set to consumers of the bindings.

Architecture

Ideally the bindings will consist of three components:

• The raw native API, which serves to create a usable, but not particularly ergonomic, layer over GTK. This should be automatically generated from gir sources.
• A manually maintained convenience layer which wraps GTK structures and functions in a more natural C#-like API.
• A language integration library which allows for other C#/.NET ecosystem libraries to interface with Gtk.

Consumers

The primary consumer for this library will be Bluetype, a word-processor for students and authors. This will be a rewrite of my school project 'BluEdit' in C# to both drive development of the bindings and make it easier to iterate on.