Install GNOME development environment on Gentoo
Contents
Minimal version requirements
For setting up a decent GNOME development environment you should be on a fairly recent distribution to avoid fighting with old problems and dependencies. As Gentoo is a rolling distribution, be sure to have the distribution update.
GNOME Overlay
As of now (16 Dec 2011) GNOME 3.2 is available in the unstable arch branch. A guide for upgrading from GNOME 2.32.x to GNOME 3.2.x has been provided: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/gnome/howtos/gnome-3.2-upgrade.xml
Install the developer-tools
First you need to install the basic tools needed for GNOME development. To do so, install these packages either using emerge command line tool or any other portage tool:
Install additional libraries needed for the GStreamer demos
If you want to follow the tutorials on http://developer.gnome.org you need to install some additional GStreamer packages:
any other plugin on the media-plugins category
Install required packages for your favorite programming language
Decide which programming language you are going to use and install the appropriate packages for one or more languages. The following subsections will the packages you have to install:
C
For C programming you need to install the development version of the important GNOME libraries. Those contain the header files and additional linker information:
Even without the doc keyword devhelp already will have all the needed manuals, though, for extra documentation be sure to emerge all packages with the doc keyword.
C++
By default (i.e. with the nocxx no used) GCC is already compiled with C++ support.
For C++ programming you need to install the development version of the important GNOME libraries. Those contain the header files and additional linker information:
Even without the doc keyword devhelp already will have all the needed manuals, though, for extra documentation be sure to emerge all packages with the doc keyword.
Python
Python uses GObjectIntrospection which means you don't need to install additional development libraries but you should be sure to have a decent python environment installed, currently Gentoo allows you to have multiple python versions installed (2.4.x, 2.6.x, 2.7.x and 3.1.x). Also you need to install the pygobject package to be able to use introspection:
Vala
As the Vala compiler actually translates your code into C code you will have to install all the packages listed in the C section and in addition you need to install the vala compiler:
JavaScript
JavaScript uses GObjectIntrospection which means you don't need to install additional development libraries but you need to have the JavaScript intepreter:
Note there is also Seed which is another JavaScript implementation used in GNOME but the examples on developer.gnome.org are all done with gjs.
Keep this page up-to-date
Distribution information can change rather fast so please correct errors found on this page. If you are not able to figure out yourself, please drop a mail to gnome-doc-list@gnome.org. Thanks!