Linux on any device

The Midori Browser is an attractive, lightweight web browser utilizing the WebKit backend. For me, the elegance of the Midori/WebKit combo is something impressive; when compiled and installed, the complete browser runs from two files; one shared library (webkit*.so) and one executable (midori). For me, this is truly refreshing after the “mess” that comes when building/installing Firefox.

The downside? Midori and WebKit are both non-stable, rapidly changing softwares and no binary packages are really available for either. Numerous instructions exist for how to compile these, though. Here’s one more to add to that list, but this time using Melas; and you actually get .deb packages that you can then remove and/or upgrade. These instructions, therefore, assume a .deb -based system. This was tested on Ubuntu 7.04, but shouldn’t (hopefully) be much different for any other recent Ubuntu.

1. Build dependencies

Usual build essentials (compiler, etc.) should obviously be present, as well as a number of development packages. These should be installable via (under Ubuntu or other apt-get -based systems — also, you will probably need to have the universe repositories enabled);

sudo apt-get install build-essential libcurl3-dev \
    libicu36-dev libgtk2.0-dev libsqlite3-dev \
    libfreetype6-dev libxslt1-dev libsexy-dev \
    libxml2-dev

2. Install Melas

Install the latest Melas package available from the Melas project site.

3. Make a build directory

Execute your build in an empty directory created for this purpose, eg.;

mkdir midori
cd midori

4. Build and install WebKit

Build WebKit with the following command:

mls-build http://www.igelle.org/mk/webkit.mls --run=rebuild

The install with your favourite package manager, eg.;

sudo dpkg --install webkit*.deb

5. Build and install Midori

Then build Midori itself:

mls-build http://www.igelle.org/mk/midori.mls --run=rebuild

And again install with your favourite package manager, eg.;

sudo dpkg --install midori*.deb

The browser should then appear in your application menus, and/or can be started from the command line as

/usr/bin/midori

Happy browsing!

Tags: Melas, Tips and Tricks