PhantomJS 2.1.1 in Ubuntu different from upstream

For some time now I've been hitting PhantomJS #12506 with the latest 2.1.1 version. The problem is supposedly fixed in 2.1.0 but this is not always the case. If you use a .deb package from the latest Ubuntu then the problem still exists, see Ubuntu #1605628.

It turns out the root cause of this, and probably other problems, is the way PhantomJS packages are built. Ubuntu builds the package against their stock Qt5WebKit libraries which leads to

$ ldd usr/lib/phantomjs/phantomjs | grep -i qt
    libQt5WebKitWidgets.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5WebKitWidgets.so.5 (0x00007f5173ebf000)
    libQt5PrintSupport.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5PrintSupport.so.5 (0x00007f5173e4d000)
    libQt5Widgets.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5Widgets.so.5 (0x00007f51737b6000)
    libQt5WebKit.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5WebKit.so.5 (0x00007f5171342000)
    libQt5Gui.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5Gui.so.5 (0x00007f5170df8000)
    libQt5Network.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5Network.so.5 (0x00007f5170c9a000)
    libQt5Core.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5Core.so.5 (0x00007f517080d000)
    libQt5Sensors.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5Sensors.so.5 (0x00007f516b218000)
    libQt5Positioning.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5Positioning.so.5 (0x00007f516b1d7000)
    libQt5OpenGL.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5OpenGL.so.5 (0x00007f516b17c000)
    libQt5Sql.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5Sql.so.5 (0x00007f516b136000)
    libQt5Quick.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5Quick.so.5 (0x00007f5169dad000)
    libQt5Qml.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5Qml.so.5 (0x00007f5169999000)
    libQt5WebChannel.so.5 => /lib64/libQt5WebChannel.so.5 (0x00007f5169978000)

While building from the upstream sources gives

$ ldd /tmp/bin/phantomjs | grep -i qt

If you take a closer look at PhantomJS's sources you will notice there are 3 git submodules in their repository - 3rdparty, qtbase and qtwebkit. Then in their build.py you can clearly see that this local fork of QtWebKit is built first, then the phantomjs binary is built against it.

The problem is that these custom forks include additional patches to make WebKit suitable for Phantom's needs. And these patches are not available in the stock WebKit library that Ubuntu uses.

Yes, that's correct. We need additional functionality that vanilla QtWebKit doesn't have. That's why we use custom version.

Vitaly Slobodin, PhantomJS

At the moment of this writing Vitaly's qtwebkit fork is 28 commits ahead and 39 commits behind qt:dev. I'm surprised Ubuntu's PhantomJS even works.

The solution IMO is to bundle the additional sources into the src.deb package and use the same building procedure as upstream.