GdkPixbuf: Image loading library

GdkPixbuf is a library that loads image data in various formats and stores it as linear buffers in memory. The buffers can then be scaled, composited, modified, saved, or rendered.

GdkPixbuf can load image data encoded in different formats, such as:

• PNG
• JPEG
• TIFF
• TGA
• GIF

Additionally, you can write a GdkPixbuf loader module and install it into a well-known location, in order to load a file format.

GdkPixbuf is used by the GTK toolkit for loading graphical assets.

NOTE: GdkPixbuf should be used to load UI assets in trusted scenarios; you should not be using it to load arbitrary images. We recommend using projects like Glycin instead.

Building GdkPixbuf

Requirements

In order to build GdkPixbuf you will need to have installed:

• Meson
• A C99-compliant compiler and toolchain
• GLib’s development files

Depending on the image formats you want to support you will also need:

• libpng’s development files
• libjpeg’s development files
• libtiff’s development files

Additionally, you may need:

• shared-mime-info
• GObject Introspection
• GI-DocGen
• mediaLib’s development files

Building and installing

You should use Meson to configure GdkPixbuf’s build, and depending on the platform you will be able to use Ninja, Visual Studio, or XCode to build the project; typically, on most platforms, you should be able to use the following commands to build and install GdkPixbuf in the default prefix:

$ meson setup _build .
$ meson compile -C _build
$ meson install -C _build

You can use Meson’s --prefix argument to control the installation prefix at configuration time.

You can also use meson configure from within the build directory to check the current build configuration, and change its options.

Build options

You can specify the following options in the command line to meson:

• -Dgtk_doc=true - Build the API reference documentation
• -Drelocatable=true - Enable application bundle relocation support

For a complete list of build-time options, see the file meson_options.txt. You can read about Meson options in general in the Meson manual.

Running tests

You can run the test suite by running meson test -C _build, where _build is the build directory you used during the build stage.

License

GdkPixbuf is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1, or, at your option, any later version. See the COPYING file for further details.