GTK+ or Qt under Windows [closed]

Question

I was wondering which one should I consider if I need the software to be used on both platforms, WIN and Linux and why?

Answer 1

Packaging GTK and its dependencies on Windows is a full-time project in itself. Qt is much more easily distributed since it has no dependencies that do not come with Windows.

Qt has been cross platform from the start. GTK has not always been cross platform. Such fundamental decisions shape the overall design, and should be made before any code is written in my opinion.

I would comment more, but I'd be drifting into speculation, the above two things I know for certain.

Answer 2

Both are good toolkits that have their advantages and disadvantages.

One difference is the implementation language. Qt is in C++, and GTK+ is in C. However GTK+ has bindings for many, many other languages (perl, python, C++, .NET, etc) so it's not a huge issue.

An Advantage of Qt is that it offers a bit broader range of functionality built in (xml, database access, network programming, openGL, etc). GTK+ has basically all of these things within its orbit (e.g. libxml2, librsvg, libsoup, libgda, etc), but they're not as much of a single coherent package as Qt is.

My personal recommendation is to use gtkmm, the C++ bindings for GTK+. It offers a more comfortable object-oriented language to program in, and it provides nearly the same native performance as using GTK+ from C. (Disclaimer: I contribute to gtkmm).