Deploying Qt WebEngine Applications
The way to package and deploy applications varies between operating systems. For Windows and macOS, windeployqt and macdeployqt automate the steps to generate a stand-alone application package.
When manually deploying applications that depend on Qt WebEngine, all the files that are required to run the application have to be included: libraries, QML imports, plugins, and translations.
For more information, see Deploying Qt Applications.
Target Platforms
Qt WebEngine does try to support all Supported Platforms of Qt. However, due to different requirements of Chromium this is not always possible. Known limitations are:
- Qt WebEngine currently supports only Windows, Linux, and macOS.
- On Windows, Qt WebEngine only supports Windows Vista or newer as target platform. Due to use of newer API in Chromium, Windows XP is not supported. WinRT is not supported, either.
Deploying Applications Manually
When manually deploying applications that depend on Qt WebEngine, the following files might have to be deployed:
- Libraries
- QML imports
- Qt WebEngine process
- Resources
- Translations
- Audio and video codecs
Deploying Libraries
The following libraries must be deployed with applications that depend on Qt WebEngine:
- QtWebEngineCore library
- QtWebEngineWidgets or QtWebEngine libraries, depending on application type
Deploying QML Imports
If Qt Quick integration is used in the application, the QtWebEngine import directory needs to be deployed.
Deploying Qt WebEngine Processes
Qt WebEngine takes advantage of the multi-process model that the Chromium project offers. The multi-process model requires that the Qt WebEngine Process executable be deployed alongside your application.
The WebEngine process is executed for each QWebEngineView or WebEngineView instance. For example, a browser application with two tabs open should have two separate instances of the process running. This is a common approach used by most modern web engines to provide a stable browsing experience.
At runtime, Qt WebEngine looks for the QtWebEngineProcess
executable in the directory that QLibraryInfo::location(QLibraryInfo::LibraryExecutablesPath) returns. For Qt installations, this is QTDIR/libexec
(Linux) or QTDIR\bin
(Windows). The path can be changed by defining a qt.conf
file, for example. Alternatively, an executable path can be set as a value of the QTWEBENGINEPROCESS_PATH
environment variable. On macOS, Qt WebEngine looks for the executable in .app/Helpers/QtWebEngineProcess
.
Deploying Resources
Qt WebEngine requires the following resource files:
qtwebengine_resources.pak
contains the resources needed by Chromium.qtwebengine_devtools_resources.pak
contains tools for remote debugging.qtwebengine_resources_100p.pak
contains images suitable for low resolution displays.qtwebengine_resources_200p.pak
contains images suitable for high DPI displays.icudtl.dat
provides support for International Components for Unicode (ICU). It is the Chromium version of ICU, which is not needed if Qt WebEngine was configured to use the system ICU.
Resources are searched from the following locations:
- On Linux and Windows: the
resources
directory in the directory specified by QLibraryInfo::location(QLibraryInfo::DataPath) - On macOS:
.app/Content/Resources
Translations
Locale data (such as en-US.pak
) is searched form the following locations:
- On macOS:
.app/Content/Resources
- On Linux and Windows:
qtwebengine_locales
directory in the directory specified by QLibraryInfo::location(QLibraryInfo::TranslationsPath)
Deploying Audio and Video Codecs
To support HTML5 video, you must additionally deploy ffmpegsumo.dll
(WebM codec plugin) into the qtwebengine
directory under the application install path or under the path that the PluginsPath
variable was set to in qt.conf
.
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