Zig GIR FFI

GObject Introspection for zig. Generated GTK4 binding can be downloaded.

Warning Before zig 1.0 is released, only pre-releases targeting latest zig stable are guarenteed to be kept.

Table of Contents

• Usage

• Usage of Bindings

• Contributing

Usage

# generate bindings for Gtk
zig build run -- Gtk
# generate bindings for Gtk-3.0
zig build run -- Gtk-3.0
# display help
zig build run -- --help

Note: The typelib backend relies on field_info_get_size to work properly. Due to an issue in gobject-introspection, a patched version of g-ir-compiler (or gi-compile-repository) may be required. As bitfields are not commonly found in GIR files, users can use typelibs from their package manager (e.g., apt, msys2) without recompiling. For notable exceptions (GLib, GObject and Pango), this project ships patched typelibs (for LP64 model), which can be enabled by -I data/typelib option. For example, zig build run -- Adw -I data/typelib should work perfectly if you have installed gir1.2-adw-1 package or its equivalent.

Usage of Bindings

Run zig fetch --save https://url/to/bindings.tar.gz and add the following lines to your build.zig. For more information, refer to Zig Build System.

const gi = b.dependency("gi", .{});
exe.root_module.addImport("gi", gi.module("gi"));

Examples

• application : Port of Gtk - 4.0: Getting Started with GTK, a relatively comprehensive example

• hello : A simple example

  const std = @import("std");
  const gi = @import("gi");
  const Gio = gi.Gio;
  const Gtk = gi.Gtk;
  // ...
  
  pub fn printHello() void {
      std.log.info("Hello World", .{});
  }
  
  pub fn activate(app: *Gio.Application) void {
      const _window: *ApplicationWindow = .new(app.tryInto(Application).?);
      const window = _window.into(Window);
      window.setTitle("Window");
      window.setDefaultSize(200, 200);
      const box: *Box = .new(.vertical, 0);
      box.into(Widget).setHalign(.center);
      box.into(Widget).setValign(.center);
      window.setChild(box.into(Widget));
      const button = Button.newWithLabel("Hello, World");
      _ = button._signals.clicked.connect(.init(printHello, .{}), .{});
      _ = button._signals.clicked.connect(.init(Window.destroy, .{window}), .{});
      box.append(button.into(Widget));
      window.present();
  }
  
  pub fn main() u8 {
      const _app: *Application = .new("org.gtk.example", .{});
      const app = _app.into(Gio.Application);
      defer app.into(Object).unref();
      _ = app._signals.activate.connect(.init(activate, .{}), .{});
      return @intCast(app.run(@ptrCast(std.os.argv)));
  }
  

• clock : (Implicit) use of the main context

• custom : Custom widget

• interface : Define interface