Beyond Linux® From Scratch (systemd Edition) - Version r12.4-426

Chapter 25. Graphical Environment Libraries

WebKitGTK-2.48.5

Introduction to WebKitGTK

The WebKitGTK package is a port of the portable web rendering engine WebKit to the GTK-3 and GTK-4 platforms.

[Note]

Note

Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most recent stable versions of the books.

[Important]

Important

This package has historically had frequent updates that address security vulnerabilities. To determine the latest status check the BLFS Security Advisories.

Package Information

  • Download (HTTP): https://webkitgtk.org/releases/webkitgtk-2.48.5.tar.xz

  • Download MD5 sum: 23e26bc4e30b80462cb1030fab352409

  • Download size: 42 MB

  • Estimated disk space required: 1.5 GB (186 MB installed, add 181 MB for GTK-4)

  • Estimated build time: 21 SBU (for GTK-3, using parallelism=8, add 21 SBU for GTK-4)

WebKitGTK Dependencies

Required

Cairo-1.18.4, CMake-4.1.2, gst-plugins-base-1.26.6, gst-plugins-bad-1.26.6, GTK-3.24.51, GTK-4.20.2, ICU-77.1, Little CMS-2.17, libgudev-238, libsecret-0.21.7, libsoup-3.6.5, libtasn1-4.20.0, libwebp-1.6.0, Mesa-25.2.2, OpenJPEG-2.5.4, Ruby-3.4.7, unifdef-2.12, and Which-2.23

Recommended

bubblewrap-0.11.0, enchant-2.8.12, GeoClue-2.8.0 (runtime), GLib-2.86.1 (with GObject Introspection), hicolor-icon-theme-0.18, libavif-1.3.0, libjxl-0.11.1, libseccomp-2.6.0, and xdg-dbus-proxy-0.1.6

Optional

Gi-DocGen-2025.5, harfBuzz-12.1.0, Wayland-1.24.0, WOFF2-1.0.2, ccache, flite, Hyphen, libbacktrace, libmanette, libspiel, and sysprof

Installation of WebKitGTK

[Important]

Important

This package allows building with either GTK-3 or GTK-4, but not both in the same build. The GTK-4 version is needed for packages such as Epiphany-48.5. Other packages, such as Balsa-2.6.5 or Evolution-3.56.2, require the GTK-3 version. Both versions can be installed side by side on the same system. We give build instructions for both cases below, but the only difference is the setting of -D USE_GTK4

With the default “release” build configuration, some source files of this package require more than 4 GiB of RAM to be built. As the result, you should pass -j<N> to ninja (replacing <N> with the quotient of the amount of available RAM and 4 GiB) to limit the number of parallel jobs and avoid the job from being killed by the kernel OOM killer.

On a 32-bit system, the sum of RAM and swap space used by a build job (in fact, any single process) cannot exceed 4 GiB. So if you are building this package on a 32-bit system, you must add the -D CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE="-O2 -DNDEBUG" option to the cmake to disable some optimizations which need a lot of memory to limit the memory usage of individual build jobs. Performance will be impacted slightly, but not at a level where it is noticeable during normal usage.

If you want to install the GTK-3 version of WebKitGTK, run the following commands: 

mkdir -vp build &&
cd        build &&

cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release     \
      -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr    \
      -D CMAKE_SKIP_INSTALL_RPATH=ON  \
      -D PORT=GTK                     \
      -D LIB_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/lib     \
      -D USE_LIBBACKTRACE=OFF         \
      -D USE_LIBHYPHEN=OFF            \
      -D ENABLE_GAMEPAD=OFF           \
      -D ENABLE_MINIBROWSER=ON        \
      -D ENABLE_DOCUMENTATION=OFF     \
      -D ENABLE_WEBDRIVER=OFF         \
      -D USE_WOFF2=OFF                \
      -D USE_GTK4=OFF                 \
      -D ENABLE_BUBBLEWRAP_SANDBOX=ON \
      -D USE_SYSPROF_CAPTURE=NO       \
      -D ENABLE_SPEECH_SYNTHESIS=OFF  \
      -W no-dev -G Ninja ..           &&
ninja

This package does not have a working test suite. However, there is a usable basic graphical web browser in the build directory, build/bin/MiniBrowser. If launching it fails, there is a problem with the build.

Now, as the root user: 

ninja install

If you want to install the GTK-4 version of WebKitGTK, run the following commands: 

rm -rf * .[^.]* &&

cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release         \
      -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr        \
      -D CMAKE_SKIP_INSTALL_RPATH=ON      \
      -D PORT=GTK                         \
      -D LIB_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/lib         \
      -D USE_LIBBACKTRACE=OFF             \
      -D USE_LIBHYPHEN=OFF                \
      -D ENABLE_GAMEPAD=OFF               \
      -D ENABLE_MINIBROWSER=ON            \
      -D ENABLE_DOCUMENTATION=OFF         \
      -D USE_WOFF2=OFF                    \
      -D USE_GTK4=ON                      \
      -D ENABLE_BUBBLEWRAP_SANDBOX=ON     \
      -D USE_SYSPROF_CAPTURE=NO           \
      -D ENABLE_SPEECH_SYNTHESIS=OFF      \
      -W no-dev -G Ninja ..               &&
ninja

Now, as the root user: 

ninja install

As the -D ENABLE_DOCUMENTATION=OFF option is used, the documentation is not rebuilt nor installed now. If you need the documentation, you can either install Gi-DocGen-2025.5 and remove this option from the cmake command, or install the pre-built documentation (only for the GTK-4 version) instead: 

install -vdm755 /usr/share/gtk-doc/html &&
cp -rv ../Documentation/* /usr/share/gtk-doc/html

Command Explanations

-D CMAKE_SKIP_INSTALL_RPATH=ON: This switch makes cmake remove hardcoded library search paths (rpath) when installing a binary executable file or a shared library. This package does not need rpath once it's installed into the standard location, and rpath may sometimes cause unwanted effects or even security issues.

-D USE_LIBBACKTRACE=OFF: This switch disables the use of libbacktrace for dumping a stack trace when a crash happens. You need to install libbacktrace if you wish to enable it (replacing OFF with ON or just removing the switch).

-D USE_LIBHYPHEN=OFF: This switch disables the default automatic hyphenation implementation. You need to install Hyphen if you wish to enable it (replacing OFF with ON or just removing the switch).

-D ENABLE_DOCUMENTATION=OFF: This switch disables regenerating the documentation. Remove this switch if you have Gi-DocGen-2025.5 installed and wish to regenerate the documentation.

-D ENABLE_GAMEPAD=OFF: This switch disables gamepad support. Remove this switch if you have libmanette installed and wish to enable it.

-D ENABLE_MINIBROWSER=ON: This switch enables compiling and installing the MiniBrowser.

-D ENABLE_WEBDRIVER=OFF: This switch disables compiling and installing WebKitWebDriver. We use it for the GTK-3 build because the WebKitWebDriver from the GTK-3 build will be overwritten by the GTK-4 build anyway. Remove this option if you don't plan to build this package with GTK-4.

-D ENABLE_BUBBLEWRAP_SANDBOX=ON: This switch enables the Bubblewrap sandbox, which helps mitigate the impact of most security vulnerabilities in this package. Change this switch to OFF if you do not want to install bubblewrap-0.11.0, libseccomp-2.6.0, or xdg-dbus-proxy-0.1.6, but note that this may put you at risk.

-D USE_SYSPROF_CAPTURE=NO: This switch disables a hard dependency on sysprof.

-D ENABLE_SPEECH_SYNTHESIS=OFF: This switch disables building speech synthesis support into WebKitGTK because it requires additional external dependencies. You will need both flite and libspiel if you wish to enable this.

-D USE_SYSTEM_MALLOC=ON: This switch enables building against the system installed malloc.

-D ENABLE_GEOLOCATION=OFF: Use this switch if you don't want to install GeoClue-2.8.0.

-D USE_AVIF=OFF: Use this switch if you don't want to install libavif-1.3.0. Note that you will not have support for AVIF images if you do this.

-D USE_WOFF2=ON: Use this switch if the optional package WOFF2-1.0.2 is installed. This adds additional support for fonts.

-D USE_JPEGXL=OFF: Use this switch if the recommended package libjxl-0.11.1 is not installed. Note that you will not have support for JPEG XL images if this option is passed.

Contents

Installed Program: WebKitWebDriver
Installed Libraries: libjavascriptcoregtk-4.1.so, libjavascriptcoregtk-6.0.so, libwebkit2gtk-4.1.so, and libwebkitgtk-6.0.so
Installed Directories: /usr/include/webkitgtk-4.1, /usr/include/webkitgtk-6.0, /usr/lib{,exec}/webkit2gtk-4.1, /usr/lib{,exec}/webkitgtk-6.0, /usr/share/gtk-doc/html/{jsc-glib,webkit2gtk{,-web-extension}}-4.1 (optional), and /usr/share/gtk-doc/html/{jsc-glib,webkit2gtk{,-web-process-extension}}-6.0

Short Descriptions

WebKitWebDriver

allows debugging and automation of web pages and browsers

libjavascriptcoregtk-4.1.so

contains core JavaScript API functions used by jsc and libwebkit2gtk-4.1

libjavascriptcoregtk-6.0.so

contains core JavaScript API functions used by jsc and libwebkitgtk-6.0

libwebkit2gtk-4.1.so

contains the WebKit2 API functions

libwebkitgtk-6.0.so

contains the WebKit API functions for GTK-4 applications