# Gtk-fortran 4.0 released

**URL:** <https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/t/gtk-fortran-4-0-released/1115>\
**Category:** Announcements\
**Created:** [April 28, 2021, 8:44am UTC](https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/t/gtk-fortran-4-0-released/1115 "2021-04-28T08:44:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![vmagnin](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/fortran-lang.discourse.group/vmagnin/32/28_2.png) [@vmagnin](https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/u/vmagnin)\
**Post date:** [April 28, 2021, 8:44am UTC](https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/t/gtk-fortran-4-0-released/1115/1 "2021-04-28T08:44:25Z")

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## gtk-fortran 4.0 released

The [gtk-fortran](https://github.com/vmagnin/gtk-fortran/wiki) project is now ten years old. Its birth can be tracked down to that [comp.lang.fortran discussion](https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.fortran/c/ACQyhxfzjrk) starting on the 27th December 2010 where I especially met Jerry DeLisle (@JerryD). We started working with GTK 2, as GTK 3 was released only in February 2011. Nearly ten years later, GTK 4.0 was released on Christmas 2020. Concerning gtk-fortran, the preparatory work began in the gtk3 branch on the 24th January 2020. And just after a gtk-3-fortran release in April, the gtk4 development branch was created on the 7th May 2020. We are now ~370 commits later. See the [CHANGELOG file](https://github.com/vmagnin/gtk-fortran/blob/gtk4/CHANGELOG.md) for a summary of the new features since the April 2020 release, and the [GTK Development Blog](https://blog.gtk.org/) to know more about the numerous changes in GTK 4.

Starting with that 4.0 release, gtk-fortran will follow a classical semantic versioning (instead of following the GTK or Ubuntu versions): **gtk-fortran 4.0 is based on GTK 4.2 and GLib 2.68.** The GTK 4 library is progressively arriving in all systems: Ubuntu 21.04, Fedora 33 & 34, Alpine Linux, ALT Linux Sisyphus, Arch Linux, KaOS, Mageia 8, NetBSD 9.1, OpenMandriva Rolling, openSUSE Tumbleweed. But concerning Debian, it is still in the experimental branch. Concerning Windows, GTK 4 is available in MSYS2.

The wiki documentation has now a [Tutorials](https://github.com/vmagnin/gtk-fortran/wiki/Tutorials) page with two tutorials. A page about the Python wrapper used to [generate gtk-fortran](https://github.com/vmagnin/gtk-fortran/wiki/How-gtk-fortran-is-generated) has also been added.

The roadmap for 2021 is:

- to improve the documentation and write tutorials, update the High Level library documentation for GTK 4.
- @JerryD is exploring what the OOP features of Fortran could bring to gtk-fortran.
- We will explore coarrays: is it possible to use them in a gtk-fortran program? We hope so, as the GUI could be handled by only the first image.
- We also hope that gtk-fortran could become an fpm package: see that [issue](https://github.com/vmagnin/gtk-fortran/issues/229).

Finally, note that the gtkf-sketcher tool has only been partially ported to GTK 4, as an essential API for that tool disappeared from GTK 4. Anyway, [Glade](http://glade.gnome.org/) is not yet ported to GTK 4.

## gtk-fortran 3.24.28 released

We have also made a new release in the gtk3 branch, with GTK 3.24.28 and GLib 2.68. **All the improvements included in gtk-fortran 3.24.28 (gtk3 branch) are also in gtk-fortran 4.0.** GTK 3 itself is of course not evolving anymore and now just receives bug fixes.

Note that the packages names are gtk-3-fortran and gtk-4-fortran: installing both libraries on your machine is not a problem.