Introduction to WebKit2GTK+ Development
Prerequisites
This document assumes you have a good working knowledge of:
- The C programming language
- The GObject system, including types, signals, and properties
- GTK+
The WebKit2GTK+ Reference Manual. You don't need to understand everything, but you should at least skim the page about WebKitWebView, which is the central class of the WebKit2GTK+ API.
WebKit itself is written in C++, so if you plan to work with the system's internals, knowledge of that language is also important.
If you plan to write code that interacts with the content of web pages, you should also be familiar with the HTML Document Object Model, or DOM.
Installation
Pre-Built
WebKit2GTK+ is available as an installable developer package for most major Linux distributions. This is the best option if you are just beginning to work with WebKit, or if you are not experienced with build systems that have complex dependencies.
From Source Code
If you prefer to build WebKit2GTK+ yourself, you will need to:
Obtain the sources: http://webkitgtk.org/?page=download
Build them: http://webkitgtk.org/?page=contribute
Depending on how you obtain your sources, when you do the build you may need to use configure in place of autogen.sh. You may also need to build or install other development packages that WebKitGTK+ depends on; the WebKit2GTK+ build will notify you if any required packages are missing.
Building WebKit2GTK+ can take a very long time, especially since some parts of it cannot be built in parallel.