I tried to compile a small Hello World of mine, but it failed. Any clue? [GTK 2.x]

Since you are good at coding, we will not deal with compile time errors here :)

The classic command line to compile a GTK+ based program is

gcc -o myprog [c files] `pkg-config gtk+-2.0 --cflags --libs`

You should notice the backquote character which is used in this command line. A common mistake when you start a GTK+ based development is to use quotes instead of backquotes. If you do so, the compiler will complain about an unknown file called pkg-config gtk+-2.0 --cflags --libs. The text in backquotes is an instruction to your shell to substitute the output of executing this command into the commandline.

The command line above ensures that:

• the correct C compiler flags will be used to compile the program (including the complete C header directory list)

• your program will be linked with the needed libraries.