best C IDE and GUI IDE/toolkit/library to develop GUI apps in C on latest + future linux mint (v21.10+)
 

I used to develop linux mint GUI applications (and windoze GUI applications) often ... but that was a few years ago now. I have to assume more up-to-date IDEs and GUI toolkits or IDEs exist now for new releases of linux mint. I just built a new linux mint v21.10 system to do this work and need to choose and install IDE/GUI apps and tools.

I must say, it is not easy to find what are the current best C IDEs or GUI toolkits/IDEs for linux mint! Yikes! I don't have a better idea after two days of searching and reading!

When I was last writing applications on linux mint I was developing code with CodeBlocks IDE. But that doesn't seem to be developed for a long time ... which may mean some better IDEs have kicked their butt and taken over.

And I wrote my GUIs mostly with low-level xlib libraries, and the best I can now figure anything new should probably be developed with GTK4. But I can't find anything GTK4 on linux mint installation, the software manager doesn't show GTK or GTK-any-number or GNOME or anything (though GIMP and GEDIT applications still exist, which I thought were based on GTK or GNOME).

So how do I even find and download and install GTK4 or GNOME or whatever I need to develop GUI apps on linux mint v21.10 ???

I won't be improving old apps but instead writing new apps, so I figure I should adopt whatever is the latest and greatest tools now available.

So ... what tools are they?

#1: IDE for writing and debugging C + GUI programs.
#2: IDE or toolkits or libraries for creating GUIs.

PS: Please don't tell me to program in Java or Javascript or Python or other language ... okay? And I promise not to tell you to program in C and 64-bit assembly language like I do. :-)

PS: If there are any articles out there on the internet somewhere that discuss this topic, point me to them.

Visual Studio Code or Qt Creator.

As for installing gtk4, you probably just need to apt-get gtk4-devel or something like that. The exact command depends on your distribution.

I believe Mint calls these packages libgtk rather than gtk or GTK. Try installing under that name. You will also need the corresponding -dev packages (-devel is what Red Hat distros call them).

I like geany as a programming editor. It's not a complete IDE but it's easy to use, with multiple tabs, syntax checking, function name completion, and a facility for folding code to make debugging easier.

Rather than an IDE, you may want just a build system. Meson is very good. https://mesonbuild.com/Tutorial.html

For a GUI builder, Glade 3 is available for GTK 3.
Ed

gtk4, Qt6, Tkinter, fltk,...

Any syntax highlighting text editor will help you write code. So much easier, and it makes you learn.

Info:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Lis...t_environments

https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/getting_started.html
https://www.gtk.org/docs/

https://doc.qt.io/
https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/

Lots of gtk3 and qt5 software still running.

Your package manager and your repos is what you want to study. Also how to make a software package from source, then install it with your package manager. Look at mints docs.