Build QtWebEngine from source

Introduction#

Sometimes we need to build QtWebEngine from source for some reason, such as for mp3 support.

Build on Windows

Requirements

• Windows 10, please set your system locale to English, otherwise there may be errors
• Visual Studio 2013 or 2015
• QtWebEngine 5.7 source code (could be downloaded from here)
• Qt 5.7 install version, install it and add qmake.exe folder to system path
• Python 2, add python.exe folder to system path
• Git, add git.exe folder to system path
• gperf, add gperf.exe folder to system path
• flex-bison, add win_bison.exe folder to system path, and rename it to bison.exe

Note: I didn’t test for Visual Studio versions, all Qt versions.. Let’s just take an example here, other versions should be about the same.

Steps to build

1. Decompress source code to a folder, let’s call it ROOT
2. Open Developer Command Prompt for VS2013, and go to ROOT folder
3. Run qmake WEBENGINE_CONFIG+=use_proprietary_codecs qtwebengine.pro. We add this flag to enable mp3 support.
4. Run nmake

Note: Mp3 is not supported by QtWebEngine by default, due to license issue. Please make sure to get a license for the codec you added.