Installing gtk development environment

I cheat and use the list of packages needed to build other big GTK applications instead:

sudo apt-get build-dep inkscape

Or for a more minimal starting point, go with the bare minimum and add on when you need to:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libgtk2.0-dev

For a full development environment, the gnome-devel metapackage will install a full GTK + GNOME development environment, including the development documentation and the Anjuta IDE.

This is quite a lot more than the minimal set of things you'll need for GTK development, but it can be nice to have everything you're likely to need available.