[webkit-gtk] DLL Hell building Linux distro independent WebKit

[John Ralls]

On Dec 25, 2011, at 1:05 PM, Andrew Wood wrote:

> Im trying to build WebKitGTK+ such that I can always use the latest version on just about any Linux distro, similar to how the binary version of Firefox that Mozilla produce seems to run flawlessly on any Linux distro regardless of what libs that distro has. Presumably they do this by bundling everything it needs (libraries) to make it self contained?
> 
> 
> Ive tried to do this with WebKit but found the problem is library versions depeneded on by other libraries, it just becomes a minefield and after several weeks of messing around trying to get it to work I think this shared library problem is one of the biggest drawbacks to the Linux world - i.e many distros, many shared libs, some present, some not, some new, some older.
> 
> It seems that its impossible to build a modern version of WebKitGTK+ on solid stable distos like RHEL/CentOS, Debian stable etc because WebKit insists on a much newer version of certain libs than the ones on those distros, and as I say trying to provide a local copy of each one seems impossible...
> 
> Surely this must be possible though? Surely my dream of building a WebKit app that will just work on any distro like firefox does isnt that far fetched?
> 
> Any suggestions?

http://live.gnome.org/Jhbuild

You can build a completely (or partly) self-contained tree somewhere and use environment variables in a startup script to aim webkit at the right libraries.

Regards & Merry Christmas,
John Ralls