Error "Could not find any typelib for Gtk" with Python3 and GTK3

Question

I cannot make Python3 work with GTK3. I'm in a cluster context and I had everything recompiled from the sources.

When I run a simple example :

from gi.repository import Gtk

win = Gtk.Window()
win.connect("delete-event", Gtk.main_quit)
win.show_all()
Gtk.main()

I have the following error :

    ERROR:root:Could not find any typelib for Gtk
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "gtk3_example.py", line 2, in 
        from gi.repository import Gtk
    ImportError: cannot import name 'Gtk'

Answer 1

The problem is due to the compiled version of GTK3 that was not referenced in gobject-introspection.

It is simple to check the problem by listing the .typelib files in gobject-introspection

    $ which g-ir-scanner
    /Produits/publics/x86_64.Linux.RH6/gobject-introspection/1.40.0/bin/g-ir-scanner

    $ ls /Produits/publics/x86_64.Linux.RH6/gobject-introspection/1.40.0/lib/girepository-1.0/
    cairo-1.0.typelib     fontconfig-2.0.typelib  GIRepository-2.0.typelib  GModule-2.0.typelib  win32-1.0.typelib   xlib-2.0.typelib
    DBus-1.0.typelib      freetype2-2.0.typelib   GL-1.0.typelib            GObject-2.0.typelib  xfixes-4.0.typelib  xrandr-1.3.typelib
    DBusGLib-1.0.typelib  Gio-2.0.typelib         GLib-2.0.typelib          libxml2-2.0.typelib  xft-2.0.typelib

The problem should be solved by recompiling GTK (and its dependencies) with the configure option --enable-introspection=yes.

Answer 2

There are typically additional packages to install depending on what you want to introspect. The one I found that was crucial was gir1.2-gtk-3.0 (or 2.0 depending which version you are coding against).

Answer 3

Try using the following code:

import gi
gi.require_version("Gtk", "3.0")
from gi.repository import GTK