Building GTK+ from scratch on Linux

[Kevin Connor Arpe <kevinarpe gmail com>]

Hello,

I am building GTK+ from scratch on Linux.  I am very, very close.  All dependencies are built, but I am seeing an odd error in the final GTK+ build.

GLib-Genmarshal-WARNING **: failed to open "--valist-marshallers": No such file or directory

Fortunately, I found this old message on gtk-list:
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-list/2012-April/msg00001.html

Digging deep, I see Ian Liu Rodrigues suggested:
And what about `which glib-genmarshal'? Does it point to the correct binary compiled by you?

I checked my build: Ian was right.  The tool glib-genmarshal was being run from /usr/bin, instead of my local build dir ($HOME/saveme/gtk3).  Since I am running Debian, the base install includes GLib 2.24.2.  AFAIK: Older versions of GLib do not support the arg --valist-marshallers for glib-genmarshal.

I checked the GTK+ configure script.  I do not see an override for this issue.  To complete the build of GTK+, I am changing my PATH env var:
export PATH=$HOME/saveme/gtk3/bin:$PATH

In my experience with open source, this seems a bit odd.  Am I doing the right thing?  Or should there be an override available in GTK+ configure script?

Finally, I have a personal policy to contribute docs back to open source projects after I get help with issues on mailing lists.  This helps others to avoid the same issues in the future.  I would like to contribute a HOWTO to build GTK+ from scratch.  Where would be the best to contribute?

A little background info for this mail:
Here are the packages I have built from scratch.  Where possible, I use these configure args: --enable-introspection=yes --enable-gtk-doc --enable-debug=yes
    ATK 2.6: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/atk/2.6/
    AT-SPI2-ATK 2.7.2: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/at-spi2-atk/2.7/
    AT-SPI2 Core 2.7.2: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/at-spi2-core/2.7/
    Cairo 1.12.8: http://www.cairographics.org/releases/
    FreeType 2.4.10: http://sourceforge.net/projects/freetype/files/freetype2/
    Gdk-Pixbuf 2.26: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/gdk-pixbuf/2.26/
    GLib 2.34: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/glib/2.34/
    GObject Introspection 1.34.2: http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/gnome/sources/gobject-introspection/1.35/
    GTK+ 3.6: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/gtk+/3.6/
    HarfBuzz 0.9.7: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/harfbuzz/
    Pango 1.32: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/pango/1.32/
    Pixman 0.28.0: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/pixman/

Many thanks in advance.

Kind regards,
Kevin Connor ARPE
Hongkong