Semi-automatic and reproducible CEF build

Initial container setup

To be done once (hopefully). This container will have the basic build dependencies installed.

podman build -t cef-buildbox:v1 .
toolbox create -c cef-buildbox --image cef-buildbox:v1

Get the code (lots of it)

To get the code or update the checkout. In this example the code will be stored in cef-build. You need around 30GB of free disk space.

toolbox run -c cef-buildbox python3 /cef/automate-git.py --download-dir=$PWD/cef-build --branch=5195 --no-distrib --no-build

Compile the things

This will bake a release build in cef-build/chromium/src/cef/binary_distrib. GN flags can be tweaked in the compile-cef script and additional automate-git.py CLI options can be passed through the command-line.

toolbox run -c cef-buildbox ./compile-cef --download-dir=$PWD/cef-build --branch=5195 --no-debug-build

The branch number doesn't need to match with the previous automate-git.py call. The compile-cef call will also ensure the given branch number has been fetched. You can refer to the CEF branches Wiki page when updating it.

Host the stuff

Write a SHA1 checksum file for each tarball, and host everything through a Web server.

for f in (find cef-build/chromium/src/cef/binary_distrib -name "*.tar.bz2")
    echo $f
    sha1sum $f | cut -d' ' -f1 > $f.sha1
end
python -m http.server --directory cef-build/chromium/src/cef/binary_distrib/ 8080

Customize the gstcef build

rm -fr build/ third_party/
cmake -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCEF_VERSION="103.0.12+g8eb56c7+chromium-103.0.5060.134" -DCEF_BUILDS_HOMEPAGE_URL="http://0.0.0.0:8080/" -B build -S .
ninja -C build

The CEF_VERSION value has to match with the tarball filename produced during the previous steps.