wkhtmltopdf gem

This gem is a wrapper for standalone/static executables of the wkhtmltopdf command line tool.

How to generate standalone/static executables

The wkhtmltopdf maintainers provide packages for multiple linux distributions here.

However, to provide wkhtmltopdf executables for this gem, we need to create them as standalone/static. The following are the steps to create an amd64 executable under Ubuntu 22.04, the step to compile the static executable was based on this post:

Install tools we will use for building:

sudo apt install -y python3-yaml p7zip-full docker.io python-is-python3
sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}

Download the wkhtmltopdf repositories:

mkdir build_wkhtmltopdf
cd build_wkhtmltopdf
git clone --recursive https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf.git
git clone https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/packaging.git
cd wkhtmltopdf
git pull
git submodule update
git checkout 0.12.6
cd /home/${USER}/build_wkhtmltopdf/packaging/
git pull
git checkout 0.12.6.1-3

Optional step: Edit the entry for 'buster' and change 'output: deb' to 'output: tar' to prevent downloading a second docker image and create another docker container.

vim build.yml

Build the dynamic executable:

./build package-docker buster-amd64 /home/${USER}/build_wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf

Create a docker container so we can log into it and run the step to generate the static executable:

docker run --name wkhtmltopdf_static -it -d -v/home/${USER}/build_wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf:/src -v/home/${USER}/build_wkhtmltopdf/packaging/targets/buster-amd64:/tgt -v/home/${USER}/build_wkhtmltopdf/packaging:/pkg -w/tgt/app --user 1000:1000 wkhtmltopdf/0.12:buster-amd64
docker attach wkhtmltopdf_static  # This connects you to the docker container.
# Inside the docker container:
cd src/pdf/
g++ -Wl,-O1 -o ../../bin/wkhtmltopdf outputter.o manoutputter.o htmloutputter.o textoutputter.o arghandler.o commondocparts.o commandlineparserbase.o commonarguments.o progressfeedback.o loadsettings.o logging.o multipageloader.o tempfile.o converter.o websettings.o reflect.o utilities.o pdfsettings.o pdfconverter.o outline.o tocstylesheet.o imagesettings.o imageconverter.o pdf_c_bindings.o image_c_bindings.o wkhtmltopdf.o pdfarguments.o pdfcommandlineparser.o pdfdocparts.o moc_progressfeedback.o moc_multipageloader_p.o moc_converter_p.o moc_pdfconverter_p.o moc_imageconverter_p.o moc_pdf_c_bindings_p.o moc_image_c_bindings_p.o moc_converter.o moc_multipageloader.o moc_utilities.o moc_pdfconverter.o moc_imageconverter.o qrc_wkhtmltopdf.o -static -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++    -L/tgt/qt/lib -L/tgt/qt/plugins/codecs -lqcncodecs -L/tgt/qt/lib -lqjpcodecs -lqkrcodecs -lqtwcodecs -lQtWebKit -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lQtSvg -lQtXmlPatterns -lQtGui -ljpeg -lpng -lXrender -lfontconfig -lexpat -luuid   -lfreetype -lXext -lX11 -lxcb -lXau -lXdmcp -lQtNetwork -lssl -lcrypto -lQtCore -lz -lm -ldl -lrt -lpthread
exit

Now back to your host machine, the static executable should be located in:

ls -l /home/${USER}/build_wkhtmltopdf/packaging/targets/buster-amd64/app/bin/wkhtmltopdf

Additional notes

We are creating executable for Debian buster since we found a compile issue when generating the executable for Ubuntu focal, the cause of the issue is documented here. And while the executable is for Debian buster it has been tested to work fine in Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04.

Other targets

To generate the static executable for other platforms, the steps are similar. These are the steps to generate an arm64/aarch64 executable:

cd /home/${USER}/build_wkhtmltopdf/packaging/
./build --use-qemu linux/amd64 package-docker buster-arm64 /home/${USER}/build_wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf
docker run --name wkhtmltopdf_static_arm64 -it -d -v/home/${USER}/build_wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf:/src -v/home/${USER}/build_wkhtmltopdf/packaging/targets/buster-arm64:/tgt -v/home/${USER}/build_wkhtmltopdf/packaging:/pkg -w/tgt/app --user 1000:1000 wkhtmltopdf/0.12:buster-arm64
docker attach wkhtmltopdf_static_arm64
# Inside the docker container:
cd src/pdf/
g++ -Wl,-O1 -o ../../bin/wkhtmltopdf outputter.o manoutputter.o htmloutputter.o textoutputter.o arghandler.o commondocparts.o commandlineparserbase.o commonarguments.o progressfeedback.o loadsettings.o logging.o multipageloader.o tempfile.o converter.o websettings.o reflect.o utilities.o pdfsettings.o pdfconverter.o outline.o tocstylesheet.o imagesettings.o imageconverter.o pdf_c_bindings.o image_c_bindings.o wkhtmltopdf.o pdfarguments.o pdfcommandlineparser.o pdfdocparts.o moc_progressfeedback.o moc_multipageloader_p.o moc_converter_p.o moc_pdfconverter_p.o moc_imageconverter_p.o moc_pdf_c_bindings_p.o moc_image_c_bindings_p.o moc_converter.o moc_multipageloader.o moc_utilities.o moc_pdfconverter.o moc_imageconverter.o qrc_wkhtmltopdf.o  -static -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++  -L/tgt/qt/lib -L/tgt/qt/plugins/codecs -lqcncodecs -L/tgt/qt/lib -lqjpcodecs -lqkrcodecs -lqtwcodecs -lQtWebKit -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lQtSvg -lQtXmlPatterns -lQtGui -ljpeg -lpng -lXrender -lfontconfig -lexpat -luuid -lfreetype -lXext -lX11 -lxcb -lXau -lXdmcp -lQtNetwork -lssl -lcrypto -lQtCore -lz -lm -ldl -lrt -lpthread
exit
# you should be back to your host machine, and the static executable should be in:
ls -l /home/${USER}/build_wkhtmltopdf/packaging/targets/buster-arm64/app/bin/wkhtmltopdf

vhl/wkhtmltopdf

wkhtmltopdf gem

How to generate standalone/static executables

Additional notes

Other targets