clan-core/pkgs/clan-vm-manager

Developing GTK3 Applications

Here we will document on how to develop GTK3 application UI in python. First we want to setup an example code base to look into. In this case gnome-music.

Setup gnome-music as code reference

gnome-music does not use glade

Clone gnome-music and check out the tag v40.0 gnome-music

git clone git@github.com:GNOME/gnome-music.git && cd gnome-music && git checkout 40.0

Checkout nixpkgs version 468cb5980b56d348979488a74a9b5de638400160 for the correct gnome-music devshell then execute:

nix develop /home/username/Projects/nixpkgs#gnome.gnome-music

Look into the file gnome-music.in which bootstraps the application.

Setup gnu-cash as reference

Gnucash uses glade with complex UI Setup gnucash

git clone git@github.com:Gnucash/gnucash.git
git checkout ed4921271c863c7f6e0c800e206b25ac6e9ba4da

cd nixpkgs
git checkout 015739d7bffa7da4e923978040a2f7cba6af3270
nix develop /home/username/Projects/nixpkgs#gnucash
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
cd ..
make

• The use the GTK Builder instead of templates.

Look into virt-manager it uses python + spice-gtk

Look into virtManager/details/viewers.py to see how spice-gtk is being used

git clone https://github.com/virt-manager/virt-manager

Glade

Make sure to check the 'composit' box in glade in the GtkApplicationWindow to be able to import the glade file through GTK template

Links

• Another python glade project syncthing-gtk

• Other python glade project linuxcnc

• Install Glade UI Toolbuilder

• To understand GTK3 Components look into the Python GTK3 Tutorial

• https://web.archive.org/web/20100706201447/http://www.pygtk.org/pygtk2reference/ (GTK2 Reference, many methods still exist in gtk3)

• Also look into PyGObject to know more about threading and async etc.

• GI Python API

• https://developer.gnome.org/documentation/tutorials/application.html

• [GTK3 Python] https://github.com/sam-m888/python-gtk3-tutorial/tree/master

• https://gnome.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/libhandy/doc/1.8/index.html

• https://github.com/geigi/cozy

• 2e9bd115fe/lutris/gui/widgets/cellrenderers.py (L92)

Debugging Style and Layout

# Enable the debugger
gsettings set org.gtk.Settings.Debug enable-inspector-keybinding true

# Start the application with the debugger attached
GTK_DEBUG=interactive ./bin/clan-vm-manager