How to compile or use CefSharp with a custom CEF build

[SorceryAdmin]

Can you provide any insights of what needs to be done to achieve:

1. Compile a CEF with h264 and other codecs like those.
   2.- Create a Custom CEF build and be able to use it on CefSharp?
   Basically Know the requirements to create a compatible build so can more/less be on sync with your releases.

[amaitland]

I haven't built CEF with H264 for some time, so this might need some tweaking. It might be worth asking on https://www.magpcss.org/ceforum/index.php before starting to build as it does take many hours typically.

CefSharp uses the binaries provided by Spotify at https://cef-builds.spotifycdn.com/index.html

1. Compile a CEF with h264 and other codecs like those.

Basic CEF build instructions for creating a release build are at https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef/wiki/AutomatedBuildSetup.md#markdown-header-windows-configuration

Don't follow the Master Build Quick Start as that's for building a dev version.

Building with proprietary codecs should just require some additional GN_DEFINES

set GN_DEFINES=is_official_build=true proprietary_codecs=true ffmpeg_branding=Chrome

For reference https://www.magpcss.org/ceforum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=19221

CefSharp ships with x64, x86 and arm64 builds, each requires it's own build. (I'd suggest just building one first and use the existing binaries for the others until you have everything working).

Once you have a CEF build one, I'd suggest running cefclient.exe to confirm that it's working, confirm that H264 is working as expected.

1. 2.- Create a Custom CEF build and be able to use it on CefSharp?

It depends on what your aim is here. Is it to build a custom version of CefSharp or just replace the CEF binaries that come with it?

The easiest option is to build the exact same commit as CefSharp is using and you can just copy the build files over the top of the ones that come packaged with CefSharp. You don't need to perform any of the other build steps.

If you want to build CefSharp from scratch then you need to use the build.ps1 script from https://github.com/cefsharp/cef-binary
to package the CEF binaries into Nuget packages.

There are some instructions at https://github.com/cefsharp/cef-binary/wiki

CefSharp still uses VS2019 by default, you can build with VS2022 as well, you just need to specify the version to the script.

If you only want to package some of the three architectures then you can now pass in an argument for that

cefsharp/cef-binary#100 (comment)

Once you have Nuget packages from build.ps1 in cef-binary you can then move onto building CefSharp.

Clone CefSharp and checkout whichever branch or tag you wish to build against.

If you are using a different build version than the one CefSharp was using then you'll need to upgrade the nuget packages with

https://github.com/cefsharp/CefSharp/blob/master/UpdateNugetPackages.ps1

Again there's a build.ps1 powershell script.

https://github.com/cefsharp/CefSharp/blob/master/build.ps1

The Net Framework and Net Core versions are built independently (limitation of VC++)

https://github.com/cefsharp/CefSharp/blob/master/appveyor.yml#L11

./build.ps1 -BuildArches "x86 x64" -Verbose -Target "vs2022" -Version  135.0.170 -AssemblyVersion 106.0.290 -TargetFramework "NetFramework"

IF YOU BUILD CEFSHARP WITH VS2022 THEN YOU'LL NEED VC++ 2022 Redist

[amaitland]

There is also the excellent project https://github.com/mitchcapper/CefSharpDockerfiles (which is a little outdated, would need some updating)

You can use as a reference if that helps.

[SorceryAdmin]

Thanks, will let you know how lucky I was.