this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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Hello,

I would like to test websites against old versions of WebKit (the engine powering Epiphany and Safari) and the obvious way to do it without needing a SaaS solution like Browserstack would be to install old versions of Epiphany.

My first idea was to look at Snap and Flapak (as that would prevent issues with mismatched dependencies) but neither offer any version other than the latest.

Does anybody have an idea?

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[–] CameronDev 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Build it from source?

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/epiphany

https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit

Might be a bit of work first the time, but should get easier for other versions?

If you have a mac: https://webkit.org/build-archives/#mac-sonoma-x86_64%20arm64

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not familiar with flatpak-builder, does it handle dependencies not available on the system?

[–] CameronDev 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Not a clue, never used flatpak-builder. I was more thinking of just building the binarys rather than entire flatpaks

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

My main fear with building the binary is that it would eventually require old dependencies that I do not have on my system.

[–] realbadat 2 points 5 months ago

Stand up a little VM with an install of Debian 9.

Don't mess with your main system, don't worry about flatpaks, and you can just get rid of it if you're done with it.

[–] CameronDev 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Valid concern. But at that point you just built that dependancy as well. Really depends how far back you want to go?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

At least 4-5 years back, I want to test behaviors of WebKit circa iOS 13

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I know, but Flathub only offers versions built in 2024.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The old versions are not intended to be used like this, they get cleaned up for space, otherwise it would be petabytes of unused software.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

That makes sense, as most users automatically use the most recent version and don't need to downgrade to prior ones.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Surely not the most elegant solution, but you can download old Gnome live ISOs of e.g. Debian and run in a VM.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Oh, why haven't I thought about this sooner?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Maybe you were hoping that there is an easy and elegant solution like Appimage, Flatpak or Snap.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

More elegant than running an entire Linux system in a vm.