newbie questions how to enable packages and determine the correct version

[Matt Hull]

i have been reading and trying for at least a week and not sure what to
do.  i am trying to write a hello world app that has an option to use gtk
1.2 ior gtk 2.0 or nothing.  i wrote a small demo program that i can not
get working.  could someone either help with it or give me a few tips on
it.

i started a thread here
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-416934.html

and here is the test source
http://www2.uic.edu/~mhull1/mine-0.0.2.tar.gz

thanks for any help and sorry if this is too newbie

matt