Flickering issue with webkitgtk3 under wayland using gles

[james-cc]

I'd like to move from mickledore to the current ST offering on scarthgap.  We are using the STM32MP157D.

We require a web browser, and WebKit worked well for us on mickledore using QT5.

Since QT has been spun out to a plug-in and it is unclear how well-supported it is (ST's documentation seems lagging), I decided to go with Weston/Wayland and use a simple GTK/GDK app.

Westion is working - the GPU `/usr/local/demo/bin/weston-st-egl-cube-tex` runs nicely.  Simple apps using GDK are also working.

Sadly, though, the app embedding a WebKit view has a hard-to-describe random flickering issue.  It renders the page but then randomly overlays a white screen that occasionally flashes on and off.

Anyone able to offer some experience:

- Has anyone got a lightweight browser working on the STM32MP1 using the GPU and the recent ST scarthgap releases?

- Or got QT6 working on STM32MP1.  Did you use the ST's "QT plug-in"?

- Any advice for configuring webkitgtk3 (found in meta-oe)?  I see it is untouched by the ST layers.

[james-cc]

---

@james-cc wrote:

Sadly, though, the app embedding a WebKit view has a hard-to-describe random flickering issue.  It renders the page but then randomly overlays a white screen that occasionally flashes on and off.

This is rendering the text correctly, but none of the images.  I end up with large white boxarea being flashed at the top left.

Software compositing works (slowly).

Running the code with `GDK_GL=gles EGL_LOG_LEVEL=debug` tells me there is an invalid surface:

libEGL debug: EGL user error 0x300d (EGL_BAD_SURFACE) in eglSwapInterval

libEGL debug: EGL user error 0x300d (EGL_BAD_SURFACE) in eglSwapInterval

libEGL debug: EGL user error 0x300d (EGL_BAD_SURFACE) in eglSwapInterval

libEGL debug: EGL user error 0x300d (EGL_BAD_SURFACE) in eglSwapInterval

...

 Any advice is welcome.

[james-cc · Accepted solution]

So I chose to go with wpewebkit from meta-webkit layer found at https://github.com/Igalia/meta-webkit.git (scrathgap branch - ff17c29c - 2jan2025).

I added the "wpewebkit libwpe wpebackend-fdo cog" packages.  `cog` renders the few simple pages I threw at it successfully.

So using wayland (via wpebackend-fdo), no QT nor webkitgtk3.

[PPAGE.13]

Hi,

Qt6 is officially supported, you can use the 2.0.1 X-LINUX-QT meta layer here: https://www.st.com/en/embedded-software/x-linux-qt.html
Doc is here: https://wiki.st.com/stm32mpu/wiki/X-LINUX-QT_Expansion_Package

But we have not integrated yet the webengine officially
Anyway I can give you some indications:

1- in st-image-qt.bb, add:

# enable webengine feature
DISTRO_FEATURES:append = " webengine"

2- In  packagegroup-x-linux-qt.bb, add:

# enable webengine feature
DISTRO_FEATURES:append = " webengine"

and 

RDEPENDS:packagegroup-x-linux-qt-extra = "\

...

    qtwebengine                 \
   ${@bb.utils.contains('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'opengl', 'qtwebengine-qmlplugins', '', d)} \
   ${@bb.utils.contains('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'opengl', 'qtwebview', '', d)} \
   \

...
 

3- Then you can use the webengine quicknanobrowser application delivered by Qt.

with the following flags:

# Qt Webengine flags
export QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM_FLAGS=" \
   --ignore-gpu-blocklist --enable-gpu-rasterization \
   --enable-native-gpu-memory-buffers --num-raster-threads=4 \
   --enable-accelerated-video-decode \
   --disable-gpu-sandbox --disable-web-security \
   --enable-unsafe-webgpu \
   --enable-virtual-keyboard \
   --enable-wayland-ime \
   --enable-wayland-server \
   --enable-zero-copy \
   --hardware_video_decoding \
   --enable-hardware-overlays \
   --enable-native-gpu-memory-buffers \
   --vulkan --use-vulkan \
   --video-threads=4 \
   --enable-accelerated-2d-canvas \
"

Hope it can help.

Official Qt6 webengine support should come around mid 2025.

Philippe.

[james-cc]

Thanks.  We'll stick with wpewebkit at the moment (via weston) as it seems to be working well. We also seem to have saved quite a bit of space without having the QT libraries (although I didn't spend much effort pruning QT).