Missing step in Windows installation process?

[pieterdd]

I followed the instructions at https://gtk-rs.org/gtk4-rs/stable/latest/book/installation_windows.html and set up a Rust toolchain with msvc. I also installed MSYS2 since gvsbuild requires it to build Gtk4.

All looks well here as far as I can tell:

❯ rustup default
stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc (default)

❯ pkg-config --modversion gtk4
4.12.5

❯ echo $Env:PKG_CONFIG_PATH
C:\gtk-build\gtk\x64\release\lib\pkgconfig

❯ echo $Env:PATH
[edited for brevity];C:\gtk-build\gtk\x64\release\bin;[edited]

❯ (Get-Command lld-link).Path
C:\Program Files\LLVM\bin\lld-link.exe

❯ ls C:\gtk-build\gtk\x64\release\lib\gobject-2.0.lib

    Directory: C:\gtk-build\gtk\x64\release\lib

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-a---          27/01/2024    17:21         117044 gobject-2.0.lib

Compilation succeeds, but lld-link fails:

  = note: lld-link: error: could not open 'gobject-2.0.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'gtk-4.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'pangowin32-1.0.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'pangocairo-1.0.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'pango-1.0.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'harfbuzz.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'gdk_pixbuf-2.0.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'cairo-gobject.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'cairo.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'graphene-1.0.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'gio-2.0.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'gobject-2.0.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'glib-2.0.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'intl.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'gtk-4.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'pangowin32-1.0.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'pangocairo-1.0.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'pango-1.0.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'harfbuzz.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: could not open 'gdk_pixbuf-2.0.lib': no such file or directory
          lld-link: error: too many errors emitted, stopping now (use /errorlimit:0 to see all errors)

How do I explain to lld-link where the Gtk libraries are?

[pieterdd]

Figured it out. I modified .cargo/config as follows to make sure the linker can find the libraries:

[target.x86_64-pc-windows-msvc]
linker = "lld-link.exe"
rustflags = ["-C", "link-args=/LIBPATH:C:\\gtk-build\\gtk\\x64\\release\\lib\\"]

I'll open a pull request to amend the documentation.