[webkit-help] building WebKitGtk on GNU/Linux

[Steen Engholm]

Hi all,

after having fetched the trunk from the subversion repository, I did a
build of the gtk port of webkit . My main interest was to ascertain
the (straightforward?) supposition that a local htmfile is rendered as
html - I already have WebKitGtk in use, but without that specific
functionality . I did not want to make a system install, so just made
a configure switch to install with prefix /opt/webkit, and anyways the
GtkLauncher always reside in the buildtree . But no luck . As I have
posted before on this list, viewing local htmlfiles is somehow simply
not done in my setup ?!?!?!

However, before reaching that recurring conclusion I did have some
trouble in getting the build system going . I have noticed that
webkit.org and the wiki do have documentation on how to build, but I
also noticed there were specific instructions for Windows and Mac, but
not for GNU/Linux . Windows and Mac users are encouraged to use the
scripts residing in the Script directory in the trunk, but I made the
assumption that doing the thing manually by calling autogen.sh and so
forth could be just as well . That was not the case . I have not
checked the Script/<somescript> induced buildprocess, so what follows
is only related to choosing to do a manual build :

Automake find an error in WebKit/gtk/docs/GNUmakefile.am, and
therefore do not write
 any GNUmakefile.in . To solve this, comment out the line containing
EXTRA_DIST += . I do not know that option, but if you want the option
it should be preceded with EXTRA_DIST =  , so automake says .
After installation you will find all the manpages dumped to the root
directory (/) . That is a bit uncalled for . I guess you can avoid
this by calling configure with --disable-nls .

Build instructions:
cd <builddir>
sed -i 's/^EXTRA_DIST +=/\#&/' <srcdir>/WebKit/gtk/docs/GNUmakefile.am
<srcdir>/autogen.sh --disable-nls


regards,
Steen