You're probably missing the development package. The package name varies by distribution, but it's the one containing /usr/lib/pkgconfig/gobject-introspection-1.0.pc
(or /usr/lib64/pkgconfig/gobject-introspection-1.0.pc
for some 64-bit distros):
- Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, etc.: gobject-introspection-devel
- Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, etc.: libgirepository1.0-dev
- Arch: gobject-introspection
- FreeBSD: gobject-introspection
- Cygwin: libgirepository1.0-devel
- msys2: mingw-w64-x86_64-gobject-introspection and/or mingw-w64-i686-gobject-introspection