Here you can download a GTK 2 bundle (and a few additional libraries) built with Visual Studio 2015. HexChat for Windows is built using this bundle.

This is the bundle built by us containing all the GTK binaries, headers and import libraries. If you just want to use GTK for your application and don't want to build it yourself, download this. You will also need the Visual C redistributable to be able to run applications that use this bundle.

These are the libraries in the bundle:

If you want to build the bundle from source yourself, we have a PowerShell script that will download the sources, apply some patches and run the build. It is largely based on Fan Chun-wei's Compiling the GTK (and Clutter) stack using Visual C 2008 and later.

1. Install the following build tools and dependencies:

   • Visual Studio 2015 Community or Visual C Build Tools 2015 - Any version of VS apart from 2015 is not supported.
   • Visual C Redistributable Packages for VS 2012 Update 4
   • Visual C Redistributable Packages for VS 2013
   • Windows Management Framework 4.0 - Not needed for Windows 8.1 and above
   • CMake 3.6.1
   • msys2
   • Python 2.7 (install to C:\gtk-build\python-2.7\Win32 or C:\gtk-build\python-2.7\x64)

2. Follow the instructions on the msys2 page to update the core packages.

3. Install needed packages in the msys2 shell

   pacman -S gzip nasm patch tar xz

4. Install the following build tools and dependencies:

   • Perl 5.20 x86 or x64 (extract to C:\gtk-build\perl-5.20 so you have C:\gtk-build\perl-5.20\Win32\bin\perl.exe or C:\gtk-build\perl-5.20\x64\bin\perl.exe)
   • msgfmt (extract to C:\gtk-build so you have C:\gtk-build\msgfmt\msgfmt.exe)

   Extract the files with 7-zip, or in the MSYS2 shell with the tar command, eg tar xf perl-5.20.0-x86.tar.xz

5. Clone this repository to C:\gtk-build\github\gtk-win32 It contains the build script, project files and patches.

6. Now you have to allow PowerShell scripts to be run on your system. Open a PowerShell prompt as Administrator and run the following command:

   Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

7. Now start a new PowerShell window as a regular user. Go to the gtk-win32 directory and start building with the script. For example, to build the 32-bit bundle, run:

   C:\gtk-build\github\gtk-win32\build.ps1

   To build the 64-bit bundle instead, run:

   C:\gtk-build\github\gtk-win32\build.ps1 -Configuration x64

   The script has some parameters you can pass in. Run

   Get-Help -Full C:\gtk-build\github\gtk-win32\build.ps1

   to see the help for the parameters and examples.

8. When the script is done, your GTK stack will be found under C:\gtk-build\gtk. Enjoy!