LibreWeb Browser

LibreWeb is an open-source decentralized web browser, leveraging IPFS. What would you do different; if you could reinvent The Internet in 21st century?
With all the knowledge and new technologies available today. I was inspired by Douglas Engelbart, Tim Berners-Lee and Ted Nelson as well as projects like IPFS, Jekyll, ARPANET and more.

Note: This project is still work in progress. However, we have a working alpha version available.

For Users

Download

Just download the latest LibreWeb release and get started:

• Download the latest release

Documentation

Visit the dedicated documentation site for user documentation.

Screenshots

Community

Join our Telegram group or Matrix channel and become part of our community!

Ideas / Features

The current success criteria:

• Everyone should be able to easily read and create a site/blog/news page and publish the content online (without minimal technical knowledge);
• Built-in easy-to-use editor (whenever you want to publish some content without programming language knowledge);
• Decentralized (no single-point of failure or censorship), like: P2P, DHT and IPFS;
• No client-server approach (the client is also the server and visa versa) - think mesh network.
• Encrypted transfers;
• Data is stored redundantly within the network (no single-point of failure);
• Versioning/revisions of content and documenents (automatically solves broken 'links', that can't happy anymore);
• Publisher user should be able to add additional information about the document/page, eg. title or path (similar in how Jekyll is using the YML format for meta data)
• Human-readable source-code (eg. Markdown format, could be extended as well);
• You are in control about the layout and styling (just like with e-books);
• Content is King;
• Fast and Extensible!

Note: Since HyperText (so is HTML) is not used, you can even ditch the HTTP protocol. However TLS, for encryption, can still be used.

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The sections below are mainly relevant for software developers, who want to contribute or help LibreWeb Browser.

For Developers

Decentralized Browser is written C++ together with some external libraries. LibreWeb is using the cmark-gfm library for example, which is used for CommonMark (markdown) parsing.
We're using markdown as the source-code of the content/site. No HTML and JavaScript anymore, content is king after all.

LibreWeb Browser is also using Gnome GTK3 framework for the GUI. Using the C++ bindings, called Gtkmm.

Development Environment

Personally, I'm using VSCodium editor, with the following extensions installed: C/C++, CMake, CMake Tools, PlantUML, Markdown All in One, vscode-icons and GitLab Workflow.

But that is up to you.

Build Dependencies

For the GNU/Linux build you need at least:

• GCC 9 or higher (build-essential, g++-9)
• CMake (Package: cmake)
• Ninja build system (Package: ninja-build)
• Libcurl (Package: libcurl4-openssl-dev)
• GTK & Pango (including C++ bindings):
  • Package: libgtkmm-3.0-dev under Debian based distros

Depedencies for tests:

• X virtual framebuffer (Package: xvfb)
• Clang-format (Package: clang-format)

Note: For cross-compiling towards Windows, see the cross-compile section down below.

Build

Clone the source-code with SSH (do not forget --recurse-submodules):

git clone --recurse-submodules -j5 git@gitlab.melroy.org:libreweb/browser.git

Start the Linux build, which is using CMake and Ninja build system, using the wrapper script:

./scripts/build-lnx.sh

Optionally, use the VSCode CMake Tools extension to start the build or build with debug targets.

Linux Packaging

Note: (Linux) Packages are already available under releases.

To build a release target yourself including packaging under GNU/Linux, use: ./scripts/build-lnx-prod.sh

Root access is required when building Linux packages; add /opt/mxe/usr/bin to the secure_path using: sudo visudo.

Unit testing

To execute the unit tests you can configure with cmake -DUNITTEST:BOOL=TRUE and build. Execute: ctest command in the tst target directory.

Or just use script:

./scripts/build-run-tests.sh

C++ Coding Style Guidelines

Automated Clang-format

We use our own Clang LLVM C++ Programming Style Format, using clang-format command.

To automatically comply to our style format execute following script (inplace edits are performed for you):

./scripts/fix-format.sh

Check only for errors, run: ./scripts/check-format.sh

Core Guidelines

We also tend to follow the C++ Core Guidelines as much as possible.

Doxygen

See latest Developer Documentation.

Doxygen is build by default. You can disable the doxygen build, if you want, using: cmake -DDOXYGEN:BOOL=FALSE ..

Memory Leaks

First build the (GNU/Linux) target with debug symbols. Build target file should be present: ./build/bin/libreweb-browser.

Next, check for memory leaks using valgrind by executing:

./scripts/valgrind.sh

Cross-compiling Build Dependencies

For the cross-compiling towards Windows (while under GNU/Linux), you need at least:

• MXE Gtkmm3 / Curl Binary packages (static build using Meson build with GCC11, see below for more info)
• CMake (Package: cmake)
• Ninja (Package: ninja-build)
• Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (Package: nsis)

For more information and the latest pre-build GTK3 Windows download, please my other GTK 3 bundle repo.

Note: We're currently busy trying to upgrade the whole GTK stack.

We used the following build command to get the Windows dependencies and MXE cross-compilation toolset:

make gtkmm3 curl -j 16 MXE_TARGETS='x86_64-w64-mingw32.static' MXE_PLUGIN_DIRS='plugins/gcc10'

NOTE: Soon we need gcc11, but GTK3 upstream needs to create a new release that fixes the GCC11 builds.

Add the following line to the end of the ~/.bashrc file:

export PATH="/opt/mxe/usr/bin:$PATH"

Cross-compile Build

Please, be sure you meet all the requirements above. So your MXE environment should be ready in: /opt/mxe/usr.

To start the cross-compile build towards Windows 64-bit (using GNU/Linux as host) you can use the commands below.

Build a Windows development release:

./scripts/build-win.sh

Build a production release + packaging with NSIS, execute the following:

./scripts/build-win-prod.sh

See also: Windows readme file.

Research

For research document plus findings including explanation (like diagrams) see the:

• LibreWeb Research Lab Project