"No WebView plug-in found!" with Qt 6.2.3 on Linux

[liteyear]

I've build Qt 6.2.3 from source, passing -skip qtwebengine to ./configure to work around some showstoppers.

I have then been able to qmake and make a simple QML based project and run it on Linux with the -platform eglfs flag. When I was targeting Raspberry Pi OS, I'm sure the webview appeared. Now I'm targeting a Yocto based distribution, the dreaded "No WebView plug-in found!" error is back, and no webview appears.

I've tried every variation of QT += I can think of, lots of permutations of QtWebView::initialize(); and reviewed the Qt configure and make over and over looking for clues. I see /qt/plugins does not contain webview, however all the usual libqtwebviewquickplugin.so and libQt6WebView.so.6/libQt6WebViewQuick.so do appear in the right spots.

I've attached the output when I run my app with QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1 set. Argh, not enough permissions. Hang on... here it is as a gist.

What it required to get WebView to work on Linux in Qt 6.2, with WebEngine disabled?

[SGaist]

Hi,

You can't have it without on Linux as stated in the module documentation.

[liteyear]

Hmm, I see. The configure script disagrees:

Checking dependencies of 'qtwebview'
Skipping optional dependency 'qtwebengine' of 'qtwebview', because building 'qtwebengine' was explicitly disabled.

I thought for sure I had this working on RPiOS, and all the way from Qt configure to project build to app run, I'm led to believe I could. But that sounds pretty definitive, so perhaps it was just wishful thinking...

An excerpt from my notes:

There was some doubt about whether qtwebview had dependencies on qtwebengine, but I've proven by way of a running GUI on the Raspberry Pi 3B+ plus 7" Touchscreen, in X, VNC and bare console forms, that qtwebengine is not required.

It's been a long, long night, so maybe I got my wires crossed.

[SGaist]

Something may have changed and the doc is wrong. From what I remember, QtWebView makes use of the OS provided web API and on Linux (and Windows for that matter) there's not an OS based API that provides that.

I would be happy to be proven wrong though.

[liteyear]

Just to close the loop, I was unable to prove you wrong, @SGaist . I bit the bullet and recompiled with qtwebengine enabled (no small feat!) and everything started working the way I remembered it. So I think I may have led myself astray with optimistic recall.