This is a Qt-based Web Browser core for libretro.

NOTE: This core has only been tested on Linux and is not guaranteed to work on any other platform yet.

The browser uses the webkit-based QWebView class which is available in Qt versions 5.5 and earlier. After 5.5, QWebView was replaced with QWebEngine, which is chromium-based, however that class does not yet support static linking, so for now we use the webkit version instead.

NOTE: Some Linux distributions (ArchLinux) seem to ship QWebView even with newer Qt versions like 5.7 where it has been removed upstream. In this case you can ignore any text that mentions requiring Qt 5.5 or earlier.

Standalone Application

If you want to compile the browser as a simple standalone desktop application (outside of libretro), you can do so with (assuming Qt 5.5 or earlier):

qmake minibrowser-apptest.pro

make

Shared Library

To compile a shared library version for libretro:

make -f Makefile.libretro-shared

This will output minibrowser_libretro.so which can be loaded just like any other libretro core.

Static Library

To compile a static libretro core, much more work is needed. A custom static build of Qt is required, with many options disabled (or set to be compiled in) to get rid of the extra dependencies and platform support that isn't used. Also, most system libraries, even if they do provide a static version to link with, usually are not provided with -fPIC enabled, so this is unsuitable for a libretro core.

To compile Qt, you will need to download the "qt-everywhere-opensource-src" package from www.qt.io, with a version no newer than 5.5.1. The files in the config/ directory provide the options to Qt's ./configure script that are known to work (NOTE: the OpenGL version is currently untested).

On an Ubuntu 16.04 x64 machine, at least the following system packages have been found to need recompilation to include -fPIC on their static libraries:

libfreetype6

libglib2.0-0

libgstreamer1.0-0

gstreamer1.0-plugins-base

libicu55

libpcre3

libxml2

libssl1.0.0

libsqlite3-0

zlib1g

You will find in the patches/ directory, diffs of the debian/rules files for each of these which can be used to rebuild the packages with the appropriate flags using "dpkg-buildpackage". The resulting libraries should be copied into libs/ so that the minibrowser makefile can find them. Please see Makefile.libretro for an exact listing of each file within libs/ that is needed.

Once all the required libraries are ready, then compile the libretro core with:

make -f Makefile.libretro

This will output minibrowser_libretro.so which can be loaded just like any other libretro core.

Binary

A precompiled static core for Linux x64 (made on Ubuntu 16.04) is available here.