`wails doctor` falsely reports `libwebkit | webkit2gtk4.0-devel` installed on Fedora 41

[nbolton]

Description

On Fedora 41, it appears that wails doctor falsely reports webkit2gtk4.0-devel as installed.

To Reproduce

On Fedora 41, when I run wails dev I see:

Package 'webkit2gtk-4.0' not found

I ran wails doctor and it said webkit2gtk4.0-devel was installed.

# Dependencies
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
| Dependency | Package Name        | Status    | Version |
| *docker    | moby-engine         | Installed | 28.3.0  |
| gcc        | gcc-c++             | Installed | 14.3.1  |
| libgtk-3   | gtk3-devel          | Installed | 3.24.43 |
| libwebkit  | webkit2gtk4.0-devel | Installed | 2.46.5  |
| npm        | nodejs-npm          | Installed | 10.9.2  |
| pkg-config | pkgconf-pkg-config  | Installed | 2.3.0   |
| *upx       | upx                 | Installed | 5.0.1   |
|                                                        |
└─────────────── * - Optional Dependency ────────────────┘

However, after running sudo dnf install webkit2gtk4.0-devel the error went away and wails dev started working.

Expected behaviour

If webkit2gtk4.0-devel is not installed on Fedora 41, wails doctor should say it is not installed.

Screenshots

No response

Attempted Fixes

No response

System Details

# Dependencies
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
| Dependency | Package Name        | Status    | Version |
| *docker    | moby-engine         | Installed | 28.3.0  |
| gcc        | gcc-c++             | Installed | 14.3.1  |
| libgtk-3   | gtk3-devel          | Installed | 3.24.43 |
| libwebkit  | webkit2gtk4.0-devel | Installed | 2.46.5  |
| npm        | nodejs-npm          | Installed | 10.9.2  |
| pkg-config | pkgconf-pkg-config  | Installed | 2.3.0   |
| *upx       | upx                 | Installed | 5.0.1   |
|                                                        |
└─────────────── * - Optional Dependency ────────────────┘

Additional context

No response

[nbolton]

Maybe also an issue on Ubuntu: #3581 (comment)

[dosubot]

Hi @nbolton! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the wails team.

Yes, this is likely the same issue on Ubuntu. On Ubuntu (including 24.04), wails doctor checks if libwebkit2gtk-4.0-dev is installed by running apt list -qq libwebkit2gtk-4.0-dev and looking for [installed] in the output. It does not verify if pkg-config can actually find or use webkit2gtk-4.0, so if the package is broken or pkg-config is misconfigured, you can get a false positive—wails doctor says it's installed, but wails dev fails to build because the headers or libraries aren't actually usable. This matches the Fedora behavior and explains the disagreement between wails doctor and wails dev in the Ubuntu issue you linked. There are currently no open tickets or docs updates addressing this specifically for Ubuntu 24.04.
Source: apt detection logic

To reply, just mention @dosu.

---

^{How did I do? Good | Irrelevant | Incorrect | Verbose | Hallucination | Report 🐛 | Other}    

[leaanthony]

Hi! Please include the output of wails doctor. I can't tell if this is for v2 or v3 👍

[nbolton]

However, after running sudo dnf install webkit2gtk4.0-devel the error went away and wails dev started working.

To confirm, I fixed the issue by installing webkit2gtk4.0-devel. If you want, I can uninstall it and try to repo the issue.

Re-running this now in fixed condition. I believe the version is the same version, as I haven't updated Wails AFAIK:

$ wails doctor

                                
          Wails Doctor          
                                

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
# Wails
Version         | v2.10.2
Package Manager | dnf    


# System
WARNING: failed to read int from file: open /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/online: no such file or directory
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
| OS           | Fedora Linux                                                         |
| Version      | 41                                                                   |
| ID           | fedora                                                               |
| Branding     |                                                                      |
| Go Version   | go1.23.8                                                             |
| Platform     | linux                                                                |
| Architecture | amd64                                                                |
| CPU          | Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-9600K CPU @ 3.70GHz                             |
| GPU          | TU104 [GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER] (NVIDIA Corporation) - Driver: nvidia |
| Memory       | 66GB                                                                 |
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

# Dependencies
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
| Dependency | Package Name        | Status    | Version |
| *docker    | moby-engine         | Installed | 28.3.3  |
| gcc        | gcc-c++             | Installed | 14.3.1  |
| libgtk-3   | gtk3-devel          | Installed | 3.24.43 |
| libwebkit  | webkit2gtk4.0-devel | Installed | 2.46.5  |
| npm        | nodejs-npm          | Installed | 10.9.3  |
| pkg-config | pkgconf-pkg-config  | Installed | 2.3.0   |
| *upx       | upx                 | Installed | 5.0.2   |
|                                                        |
└─────────────── * - Optional Dependency ────────────────┘

# Diagnosis
 SUCCESS  Your system is ready for Wails development!

 ♥   If Wails is useful to you or your company, please consider sponsoring the project:
https://github.com/sponsors/leaanthony

[leaanthony]

Thanks 👍 It would be great to work out why exactly it wasn't working as expected. There's been a few reports with linux package detection, probably because there are so many variants 😬

[nbolton]

Any pointers where to start looking in the code?

[leaanthony]

v2 doctor lives here: v2/cmd/wails/doctor.go

[nbolton]

OK, so from what I can tell, doctor runs dnf info installed webkit2gtk4.0-devel and dnf info installed webkit2gtk3-devel and if either of them return output with Version text, then it assumes it is installed.

The problem is that, when it isn't installed, dnf returns the available package, like so:

$ dnf info installed webkit2gtk4.0-devel
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Available packages
Name           : webkit2gtk4.0-devel
Epoch          : 0
Version        : 2.46.5
Release        : 1.fc41
Architecture   : i686
Download size  : 354.6 KiB
Installed size : 5.2 MiB
Source         : webkit2gtk4.0-2.46.5-1.fc41.src.rpm
Repository     : updates
Summary        : Development files for webkit2gtk4.0
URL            : https://www.webkitgtk.org/
License        : LGPL-2.1-only AND BSD-2-Clause AND BSD-3-Clause AND ISC AND bzip2-1.0.6 AND NCSA AND MIT AND GPL-2.0-only AND MPL-1.1 AND SunPro AND Unicode-TOU AND Apache-2.0 AND GPL-3.0-or-later WITH Bison-exception-2.2 AND 
               : GPL-3.0-only WITH Autoconf-exception-3.0 AND MPL-2.0 AND OFL-1.1 AND (AFL-2.0 GPL-2.0-or-later) AND BSD-Source-Code AND BSD-2-Clause-Views AND LGPL-2.1-or-later AND (NCSA OR MIT) AND Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-except
               : ion AND ICU AND BSL-1.0
Description    : The webkit2gtk4.0-devel package contains libraries, build data, and header
               : files for developing applications that use webkit2gtk4.0.
Vendor         : Fedora Project

Name           : webkit2gtk4.0-devel
Epoch          : 0
Version        : 2.46.5
Release        : 1.fc41
Architecture   : x86_64
Download size  : 353.3 KiB
Installed size : 5.2 MiB
Source         : webkit2gtk4.0-2.46.5-1.fc41.src.rpm
Repository     : updates
Summary        : Development files for webkit2gtk4.0
URL            : https://www.webkitgtk.org/
License        : LGPL-2.1-only AND BSD-2-Clause AND BSD-3-Clause AND ISC AND bzip2-1.0.6 AND NCSA AND MIT AND GPL-2.0-only AND MPL-1.1 AND SunPro AND Unicode-TOU AND Apache-2.0 AND GPL-3.0-or-later WITH Bison-exception-2.2 AND 
               : GPL-3.0-only WITH Autoconf-exception-3.0 AND MPL-2.0 AND OFL-1.1 AND (AFL-2.0 GPL-2.0-or-later) AND BSD-Source-Code AND BSD-2-Clause-Views AND LGPL-2.1-or-later AND (NCSA OR MIT) AND Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-except
               : ion AND ICU AND BSL-1.0
Description    : The webkit2gtk4.0-devel package contains libraries, build data, and header
               : files for developing applications that use webkit2gtk4.0.
Vendor         : Fedora Project

To fix this, I can think of two options.

1. Use rpm instead

Run rpm -q --qf '%{VERSION}\n' webkit2gtk4.0-devel and check the return code, then use the resulting output as the version number.

Using rpm could be smarter because we have more control over the output, and it's a bit more low-level than dnf.

When installed:

$ rpm -q --qf '%{VERSION}\n' webkit2gtk4.0-devel
2.46.5
$ echo $?                                       
0

Note: We'd probably drop the \n in the code which saves us from having to strip the output.

When not installed:

$ rpm -q --qf '%{VERSION}\n' webkit2gtk4.0-devel
package webkit2gtk4.0-devel is not installed
$ echo $?
1

2. Stick with dnf

If we stick with dnf, I think we should use dnf -q list --installed webkit2gtk4.0-devel instead of dnf installed since it gives us a usable return code (1 for no package).

However, we would have to parse the output since I don't think there's an equivalent of --qf '%{VERSION}\n' in dnf (but I could be wrong).

When installed:

$ dnf -q list --installed webkit2gtk4.0-devel
Installed packages
webkit2gtk4.0-devel.x86_64 2.46.5-1.fc41 updates
$ echo $?                                       
0

When not installed:

$ dnf -q list --installed webkit2gtk4.0-devel
No matching packages to list
$ echo $?
1

[leaanthony]

I'm keen to keep this to dnf as we know it'll be installed so Option 2 it is.

[nbolton]

Want me to do a PR? If so, I've paged this out so may take a while.