## Compiling GIO applications

GIO comes with a `gio-2.0.pc` file that you should use together with `pkg-config` to obtain the necessary information about header files and libraries. See the `pkg-config` man page or the GLib documentation for more information on how to use `pkg-config` to compile your application.

If you are using GIO on UNIX-like systems, you may want to use UNIX-specific GIO interfaces such as GUnixInputStream, GUnixOutputStream, GUnixMount or GDesktopAppInfo. To do so, use the `gio-unix-2.0.pc` file instead of `gio-2.0.pc`

Since GIO is based on GObject, you need to call `g_type_init()` before you can use any GIO functions. If your application uses GTK+, this is already taken care of by `gtk_init()`.