Get WPE

WPE is an open source/free software project. That means that you can get the source code directly and modify it to serve your needs. While this can sometimes be an involved process, there are different ways to get your hands on WPE, depending on what you need.

• Install it from your Linux distribution: This is the easiest, and it allows you to quickly test WPE on the desktop.
• Build an image for supported reference hardware: This is a bit more involved, but it’s an easy way to try out WPE directly on embedded hardware.
• Download the official tarball releases: This is the best way to get periodical updates with new features and security fixes.
• Get the source code directly from git: This is only necessary if you want to get involved in the development of WPE.

Before starting

Before getting the code, it’s a good idea to be familiar with what you will need. The different components that are needed to run WPE are:

• WebKit: as WPE is an official WebKit port, you will need the source code for the WebKit project.
• libwpe: A general-purpose library for WPE, that enables integration between WebKit and different platforms, through backends.
• WPEBackend-fdo: A reference FreeDesktop.org backend for WPE, that relies on different FreeDesktop.org projects and can serve as a starting point to either customize or create a completely new backend for specific configurations.
• Cog: A simple and minimalistic browser using WPE, with no user interface, suitable to be used as a Web application container or as a starting point to develop more complex browser applications based on WPE.

Install it from your Linux distribution

These packages are not just a quick and simple way to test WPE but they also come with all the development files and documentation necessary to build and test software that uses this web engine. Some of the distributions that already have built packages for WPE are:

• Debian
• Ubuntu
• Raspbian
• Arch Linux
• Fedora

This list is not exhaustive, so if you use a different distributions, there might be packages for it already. Refer to the official documentation of your distribution for information on how to install packages.

Build an image for supported reference hardware

A simple way to cross-compile WPE and its dependencies for a target architecture is to use an existing build framework. We provide recipes for a OpenEmbedded/Yocto layer for WPE. There are specific instructions in the project wiki.

Download the official tarball releases

We periodically package WPE and its associated libraries, following a predictable release schedule, to make sure that both stable and development versions are available to users, deployers, and developers. Following the release schedule is the best way to follow the progress of WPE, get a sense of what’s coming, and properly prepare for updates in your production deployments.

Unstable releases are development versions, that give a preview of what’s coming in the next stable release. These are useful for beta-testing, and to prepare to upgrade your deployment to an upcoming stable release when this is out. Unstable releases should never be used in production.

Below is a summary of the latest stable and unstable releases for WPE and its components:

Releases

Get the source code directly from git

This is the most involved way to get the source code, and it’s only recommended for developers who are interested in getting involved in the development of the project, or who need to implement any feature that is not yet available in WPE. Additionally, this can be also be a good way to track down any bug you might find and to fix it.

• WebKit
• libwpe.
• WPEBackend-fdo.
• Cog.

Instead of downloading each of these components on their own, the recommended procedure is cloning Git repositories for WebKit and the WebKit Container SDK. Follow the SDK instructions to prepare the container and open a shell inside it; then running Tools/Scripts/build-webkit --wpe in the WebKit source directory will produce a developer build—all the other development tools can be run directly in the container as well.

If you find any problem or want to know more about optimizing WPE for your hardware or use cases, please contact us.

Resources

• Package Releases

  The most recent stable and development releases of WPE codebases.

• Release Schedule

  How often does WEPWebKit release, and when?

• Security Advisories

  A complete archive of our security adviories, often with download links.

• Performance Tips

  A few pointers on how to get better performance out of WPEwebkit. (Github Wiki)