Header files in subdirectories (e.g. gtk/gtk.h vs gtk-2.0/gtk/gtk.h)

build, c, header, include, linux

Solution

You need to use `pkg-config` to get the include paths:

$ pkg-config --cflags gtk+-2.0
-I/usr/include/gtk-2.0 -I/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/include -I/usr/include/atk-1.0 -I/usr/include/cairo -I/usr/include/pango-1.0 -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/include/pixman-1 -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/libpng12

You must also use it to get the libraries:

$ pkg-config --libs gtk+-2.0
-lgtk-x11-2.0 -lgdk-x11-2.0 -latk-1.0 -lpangoft2-1.0 -lgdk_pixbuf-2.0 -lm -lpangocairo-1.0 -lgio-2.0 -lcairo -lpango-1.0 -lfreetype -lz -lfontconfig -lgobject-2.0 -lgmodule-2.0 -lglib-2.0

(The output of these commands will vary depending on your distribution, and will always be the correct ones for your distribution.)

Problem

I'm trying to build a hello world using GTK, which includes the line: ``` #include <gtk/gtk.h> ``` as you would expect. The Makefile supplied has the line: ``` GTK_INCLUDE = -I/usr/local/include ``` so it would expect to find gtk.h in /usr/local/include/gtk/gtk.h. However on my system, it is located in /usr/local/include/gtk-2.0/gtk/gtk.h, ie within a version'ed subdirectory. Obviously in this case I can add -I/usr/local/include/gtk-2.0 to the Makefile, but the same problem crops up with gtk.h's dependencies and so on. Is there a good way of dealing with this? Could configure be used to locate where the header files are and add the appropriate include directories? I know next to nothing about configure, but it seems to find out things about the system at build time, which is what I am after. Is this a common occurence or do I have some freak directory structure which is the real problem? Thanks for any pointers!

Original source