gtk4-cross VS focus_annotator

I use it from rust, it works with libadwaita. Since it's rust I just run cargo in a docker container. https://github.com/MGlolenstine/gtk4-cross

(Assuming GTK4) For Windows you could try gtk4-cross. It was pretty clunky to use for Vala but since they have a Rust-specific image it should be easier for your use case

For gtk programs I just put the dll's in the same folder as the binary and distribute it as a zip. Not the most elegant, but it works. I use this docker image to do the bundling https://github.com/MGlolenstine/gtk4-cross

If you're willing to install docker it's really easy to build and package for windows. https://github.com/MGlolenstine/gtk4-cross

I'm guessing you're not using this Docker container? → https://github.com/MGlolenstine/gtk4-cross

You can just bundle the required DLL's in the same directory as the executable. They don't need to install anything. You can use this docker container to handle the bundling automatically for you https://github.com/MGlolenstine/gtk4-cross

With gtk4 you can just bundle the libs. You can check out https://github.com/MGlolenstine/gtk4-cross for a docker container that handles cross-compiling to windows and packaging the libs.

The image for cross compiling: gtk4-cross

Yeah, it's actually much easier to cross compile from linux to windows. If you only have windows you can use docker desktop and this container to cross compile https://hub.docker.com/r/etrombly/rust-crosscompile . It doesn't have gtk4 support yet though, someone forked it if you need gtk4 https://github.com/MGlolenstine/gtk4-cross

Maybe this can help you. It uses docker to cross-compile to Windows and in the GitHub script I am also generating an installer.

If you want an example to get started you can check out an application (Focus Annotator) I created recently, however, the code is not very well structured and I don't have any tests.

This is the project: focus_annotator