Ubuntu24.04编译GTK4应用遇virtual:world错误，求解决方案

我正在学习GTK，尝试在Ubuntu 24.04系统上编译其hello world示例程序，但执行编译命令时出现以下错误：

> gcc $(pkg-config --cflags gtk4) -o hello-world-gtk hello-world-gtk.c $(pkg-config --libs gtk4)

Package gtk4 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gtk4.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
Package 'gtk4', required by 'virtual:world', not found
Package gtk4 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gtk4.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
Package 'gtk4', required by 'virtual:world', not found
hello-world-gtk.c:1:10: fatal error: gtk/gtk.h: No such file or directory
    1 | #include <gtk/gtk.h>
      |          ^~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.

我以为已经安装了GTK相关包，因为执行sudo apt install libgtk-4-1时，系统提示该包已是最新版本：

> sudo apt install libgtk-4-1

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
libgtk-4-1 is already the newest version (4.14.2+ds-1ubuntu1).
libgtk-4-1 set to manually installed.
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  linux-headers-6.8.0-50 linux-headers-6.8.0-50-generic
  linux-image-6.8.0-50-generic linux-modules-6.8.0-50-generic
  linux-modules-extra-6.8.0-50-generic linux-tools-6.8.0-50
  linux-tools-6.8.0-50-generic python3-netifaces
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 127 not upgraded.

问题原因与解决办法 #

问题原因 #

你安装的libgtk-4-1是GTK4的运行时库，仅用于运行已经编译好的GTK4程序，不包含编译程序所需的头文件（比如gtk/gtk.h）和pkg-config配置文件（gtk4.pc），这就是编译时找不到依赖的核心原因。

解决步骤 #

1. 安装GTK4的开发包，执行以下命令：

sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev

2. 安装完成后，重新执行原来的编译命令即可正常编译：

gcc $(pkg-config --cflags gtk4) -o hello-world-gtk hello-world-gtk.c $(pkg-config --libs gtk4)

libgtk-4-dev包包含了编译GTK4程序必需的所有开发文件，安装后pkg-config就能找到gtk4.pc配置，编译器也能定位到gtk/gtk.h头文件，编译错误即可解决。

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Cinverse