What is this .gtkrc file?

Question

I was going through Tim Pope's dotfiles and I happened to notice that he had a .gtkrc file. What does this configuration file do? And how can I make one of those?

Answer 1

.gtkrc is the configuration file for Gtk, the GUI library used by GNOME applications and others. Gtk 1.x programs read ~/.gtkrc; Gtk 2.x programs read ~/.gtkrc-2.0.

The Gnome settings program may have created one of these files for you. If it hasn't, you can create one yourself. There is some documentation of the syntax and options in the Gtk developer manual, under “resource files”.

Answer 2

GTK themes use gtkrc (GTK run commands) files to configure the appearance of the different widgets. GTK will load multiple gtkrc files, loading some after others to allow settings to be predictably overridden.

Normally, the user gtkrc file is ~/.gtkrc-2.0, but your distribution may use a different file. To determine if you distribution uses a separate file, open up .gtkrc-2.0 in a text editor and look for a comment such as:

Do Not Modify This File

If a line such as this is present, another file will be specified. The file specified is then what you will need to modify.

For most distributions, if ~/.gtkrc-2.0 does not exist, simply create a plain text file with this path and name.