The Chromium Embedded Framework RPC server

TL;DR

Just run cmake with BUILD_CEF_SERVER=1. Install missing tools if needed. There might be problems with bison. Ensure that it's 2.7+.

Build process

In order to build cef_server, BUILD_CEF_SERVER environment variable has to be set to 1 at the cmake generate project step. Most of the dependencies needed to build cef_server will be downloaded and built during this step.

Getting in more details:

  1. Will be fetched(as git submodule) and bootstrapped(download the binary) vcpkg into third_party/vcpkg.
  2. The dependencies(e.g. thrift library and boost) will be downloaded and built for the target platform. Directory vcpkg_triplets contains triplets(some sort of build configuration) for platforms that requires changing the standard vcpkg triplets. For other platforms the standard triplets will be used.
  3. Thrift compiler will be built for the host platform as well(with the default triplets). It will be copied to third_party/thrift directory.
  4. After calling the functions bring_vcpkg() variable CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE will be set that allows cmake to locate the dependencies. See vcpkg.cmake.
  5. Thrift completer will be run to generate RPC interfaces to be implemented.

Windows build specifics

Just build cef_server target. Everything must work out of the box.

Developing cef_server on macOS

Get bison and pkg-config.

brew install bison pkg-config

Bison is only needed at the build dependencies in vcpkg stage. Unfortunately for macOS and Linux bison must be installed separately.

Make sure that the version of bison is 2.7+.

$ PATH="/opt/homebrew/Cellar/bison/3.8.2/bin:$PATH" bison --version
bison (GNU Bison) 3.8.2
Written by Robert Corbett and Richard Stallman.

Copyright (C) 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Probably you already have bison in the PATH then no need in modifying PATH. Alternatively you can run:

brew link bison --force

Developing cef_server on Ubuntu

Get bison, flex and pkg-config.

apt-get install bison flex pkg-config

Make sure that the version of bison is 2.7+.

On arm64 hosts ninja must be installed to the system:

apt-get install ninja-build

Run Java test ap on Linux

  1. Build cef_server and shared_mem_helper cmake targets.
  2. Open gradle project at <project_root>/jb/project/java-gradle/build.gradle in IDEA.
  3. Navigate to <project_root>/java_tests/tests/remote/TestApp.java.
  4. Run TestApp.main(). It will fail.
  5. Go to the Run configurations in IDEA and specify the path to shared_mem_helper in the environment variables. It must be something like:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/khvv/develop/jcef/cmake-build-release/remote/Debug

Thrift files code format

Assuming python and pip are installed.

pip install thrift-fmt
cd <project_root>
thrift-fmt -w -r remote

Update vcpkg

  1. Run git pull in vcpkg directory.
  2. Commit the changes