GTK+ and Ubuntu

I'm doing a review of a GTK+ book for Slashdot. When trying one of the examples from the book, I realized that I didn't have the libgtk2.0-dev libraries. Curious, I thought I had installed / used those in the past. GTK+ is pretty core to doing any GNOME development. In any event, I typed in the following:

sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev

and was greeted with 44.4 MB of files it wanted to download (all of the dev dependencies for all of GTK+ and the supporting libraries). Now I'm definitely sure I haven't installed this before.

Which leads me to several sobering conclusions:

  1. I haven't done any GTK+ development on this Ubuntu install (sad)
  2. I haven't compiled any GTK+ from source on this Ubuntu install (mixed)
  3. Ubuntu doesn't install the 44.4 MB of dependencies by default, and I haven't noticed (see above) (I wonder if they're on the DVD)
  4. Steve will be posting something about static libraries the moment he reads this post (Ugh)

Am I more sad that I haven't tried recompiling some of my old GTK+ source on this machine, or am I more sad that I haven't had to compile anything from source because Ubuntu's repositories are so rich with applications that I haven't needed to recompile.

I think I'm most sad that its taken me so long to realize what wasn't loaded. That means I'm losing some of my skills due to atrophy.


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