Compiling GTKWave 4

GTKWave 4 is the development version with a lots of improvements and changes. Please refer to the changelog for all notable changes.

Installing dependencies

Debian, Ubuntu:

sudo apt install \
    build-essential \
    git \
    meson \
    gperf \
    flex \
    desktop-file-utils \
    libbz2-dev \
    libgtk-3-dev \
    libgtk-4-dev \    
    libgirepository1.0-dev \
    libjson-glib-dev

Fedora:

sudo dnf install \
    gcc \
    gcc-c++ \
    tcl \
    meson \
    gperf \
    flex \
    desktop-file-utils \
    glib2-devel \
    gtk3-devel \
    gtk4-devel \
    gobject-introspection-devel \
    json-glib-devel

Compiling and Installing

Clone the sources from the git repository:

git clone https://github.com/gtkwave/gtkwave/ gtkwave
cd gtkwave

After doing this, you must decide how you’re going to install GTKWave onto your system. By default, the software is installed in /usr/local/. If you wish to install into a specific prefix, use the double dash –prefix option to point to the absolute pathname.

For example, to install in /opt

meson setup build --prefix=/opt

Or, to install GTKWave globally

meson setup build

After that

meson compile -C build

Then wait for the compile to finish. This will take some amount of time.

To install GTKWave, run

sudo meson install -C build

GTKWave is now installed on your Unix or Linux system. You can find it in your Application launcher.