A simple 'hello-world' app showing how to draw on a canvas using SwiftGtk and SwiftCairo (although cairo is not very Swifty yet at this stage)
Make sure you have all the prerequisites installed (see below). After that, you can simply clone this repository and build the command line executable (be patient, this will download all the required dependencies and take a while to compile) using
git clone https://github.com/rhx/SwiftHelloCairoGtk.git
cd SwiftHelloCairoGtk
./run-gir2swift.sh
swift build
You can run the program using
swift run
A simple, empty 'Hello World' window should appear. To exit the program, click the close button or press Control-C in the Terminal window.
Please note that on macOS, due to a bug currently in the Swift Package Manager,
you need to pass in the build flags manually, i.e. instead of swift build and swift run you can run
swift build `./run-gir2swift.sh flags -noUpdate`
swift run `./run-gir2swift.sh flags -noUpdate`
Under macOS, you can also create an Application bundle that you can copy to the /Applications folder by using
./app-bundle.sh
On macOS, you can build the project using Xcode instead. To do this, you need to create an Xcode project first, then open the project in the Xcode IDE:
./xcodegen.sh
open HelloCairoGtk.xcodeproj
After that, select the executable target (not the Bundle/Framework target with the same name as the executable) and use the (usual) Build and Run buttons to build/run your project.
There now is a gtk4 branch supporting the latest version of gtk.
Version 11 introduces a new type system into gir2swift,
to ensure it has a representation of the underlying types.
This is necessary for Swift 5.3 onwards, which requires more stringent casts.
As a consequence, accessors can accept and return idiomatic Swift rather than
underlying types or pointers.
This means that a lot of the changes will be source-breaking for code that
was compiled against libraries built with earlier versions of gir2swift.
- Requires Swift 5.2 or later (Swift 5.3 is required for the
gtk4branch) - Wrapper code is now
@inlinableto enable the compiler to optimise away most of the wrappers - Parameters and return types use more idiomatic Swift (e.g.
Refwrappers instead of pointers,Intinstead ofgint, etc.) - Functions that take or return records now are templated instead of using the type-erased Protocol
ErrorTypehas been renamedGLibErrorto ensure it neither clashes withSwift.Errornor theGLib.ErrorTypescanner enum- Parameters or return types for records/classes now use the corresponding, lightweight Swift
Refwrapper instead of the underlying pointer
Building should work with at least Swift 5.2 (Swift 5.3 is required for gtk4). You can download Swift from https://swift.org/download/ -- if you are using macOS, make sure you have the command line tools installed as well (install them using xcode-select --install). Test that your compiler works using swift --version, which should give you something like
$ swift --version
Apple Swift version 5.3.2 (swiftlang-1200.0.45 clang-1200.0.32.28)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin20.3.0
on macOS, or on Linux you should get something like:
$ swift --version
Swift version 5.3.2 (swift-5.3.2-RELEASE)
Target: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
The Swift wrappers have been tested with glib-2.56, 2.58, 2.60, 2.62, 2.64 and 2.66, and gdk/gtk 3.22, 3.24, and 4.0 on the gtk4 branch. They should work with higher versions, but YMMV. Also make sure you have gobject-introspection and its .gir files installed.
On Ubuntu 18.04 and 16.04 you can use the gtk that comes with the distribution. Just install with the apt package manager:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev gir1.2-gtksource-3.0 gobject-introspection libgirepository1.0-dev libxml2-dev
If you prefer a newer version of gtk, you can also install it from the GNOME 3 Staging PPA (see https://launchpad.net/~gnome3-team/+archive/ubuntu/gnome3-staging), but be aware that this can be a bit dangerous (as this removes packages that can be vital, particularly if you use a GNOME-based desktop), so only do this if you know what you are doing:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3-staging
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev gir1.2-gtksource-3.0 gobject-introspection libgirepository1.0-dev libxml2-dev
On Fedora 29, you can use the gtk that comes with the distribution. Just install with the dnf package manager:
sudo dnf install gtk3-devel pango-devel cairo-devel cairo-gobject-devel glib2-devel gobject-introspection-devel libxml2-devel
On macOS, you can install gtk using HomeBrew (for setup instructions, see http://brew.sh). Once you have a running HomeBrew installation, you can use it to install a native version of gtk:
brew update
brew install gtk+3 glib glib-networking gobject-introspection pkg-config
Here are some common errors you might encounter and how to fix them.
If you get an error such as
$ ./build.sh
error: unable to invoke subcommand: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/swift-package (No such file or directory)
this probably means that your Swift toolchain is too old. Make sure the latest toolchain is the one that is found when you run the Swift compiler (see above).
If you get an older version, make sure that the right version of the swift compiler is found first in your PATH. On macOS, use xcode-select to select and install the latest version, e.g.:
sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app
xcode-select --install
-
When building, a lot of warnings appear. This is largely an issue with automatic
RawRepresentableconformance in the Swift Standard library. As a workaround, you can turn this off by passing the-Xswiftc -suppress-warningsparameter when building. -
The current build system does not support directory paths with spaces (e.g. the
My Drivedirectory used by Google Drive File Stream). -
BUILD_DIR is not supported in the current build system.
As a workaround, you can use the old build scripts, e.g. ./build.sh (instead of run-gir2swift.sh and swift build) to build a package.