How to install Wkhtmltopdf in Amazon Linux 2023?

Question

I am upgrading my servers to Amazon Linux 2023 from AL2. My application needs wkhtmltopdf and now while trying to install it I see that is not officially released on my specific OS version. I have already tried to install the version for AL2 but after installing all dependencies it still missing libpng.

I tried downloading the .rpm file from https://wkhtmltopdf.org/downloads.html under the AL2 aarch64 and ran sudo yum install wkhtmltox-0.12.6-1.amazonlinux2.aarch64.rpm. It seems to install correctly but executing a sample wkhtmltopdf google.com google.pdf fails. Any ideas on how to build wkhtmltopdf in Amazon Linux 2023?

On a side question. I see the Github repositories associated to this library are Archived, should I consider migrating my application's PDF generation to a different lib?

[ec2-user@backoffice ~]$ sudo yum install wkhtmltox-0.12.6-1.amazonlinux2.aarch64.rpm
Last metadata expiration check: 1:02:21 ago on Mon Nov 20 20:13:06 2023.
Dependencies resolved.
===========================================================================================================================================
 Package                                  Architecture           Version                                 Repository                   Size
===========================================================================================================================================
Installing:
 wkhtmltox                                aarch64                1:0.12.6-1.amazonlinux2                 @commandline                 13 M
Installing dependencies:
 cairo                                    aarch64                1.17.6-2.amzn2023.0.1                   amazonlinux                 669 k
 fontconfig                               aarch64                2.13.94-2.amzn2023.0.2                  amazonlinux                 278 k
 fonts-filesystem                         noarch                 1:2.0.5-12.amzn2023.0.2                 amazonlinux                 9.5 k
 freetype                                 aarch64                2.13.0-2.amzn2023.0.1                   amazonlinux                 412 k
 google-noto-fonts-common                 noarch                 20201206-2.amzn2023.0.2                 amazonlinux                  15 k
 google-noto-sans-vf-fonts                noarch                 20201206-2.amzn2023.0.2                 amazonlinux                 492 k
 graphite2                                aarch64                1.3.14-7.amzn2023.0.2                   amazonlinux                  93 k
 harfbuzz                                 aarch64                7.0.0-2.amzn2023.0.1                    amazonlinux                 843 k
 langpacks-core-font-en                   noarch                 3.0-21.amzn2023.0.4                     amazonlinux                  10 k
 libX11                                   aarch64                1.7.2-3.amzn2023.0.4                    amazonlinux                 648 k
 libX11-common                            noarch                 1.7.2-3.amzn2023.0.4                    amazonlinux                 152 k
 libXau                                   aarch64                1.0.9-6.amzn2023.0.2                    amazonlinux                  32 k
 libXext                                  aarch64                1.3.4-6.amzn2023.0.2                    amazonlinux                  40 k
 libXrender                               aarch64                0.9.10-14.amzn2023.0.2                  amazonlinux                  27 k
 libfontenc                               aarch64                1.1.3-15.amzn2023.0.2                   amazonlinux                  31 k
 libjpeg-turbo                            aarch64                2.1.4-2.amzn2023.0.5                    amazonlinux                 191 k
 libpng                                   aarch64                2:1.6.37-10.amzn2023.0.6                amazonlinux                 121 k
 libxcb                                   aarch64                1.13.1-7.amzn2023.0.2                   amazonlinux                 231 k
 mkfontscale                              aarch64                1.2.1-2.amzn2023.0.3                    amazonlinux                  33 k
 pixman                                   aarch64                0.40.0-3.amzn2023.0.3                   amazonlinux                 194 k
 ttmkfdir                                 aarch64                3.0.9-63.amzn2023.0.2                   amazonlinux                  51 k
 xml-common                               noarch                 0.6.3-56.amzn2023.0.2                   amazonlinux                  32 k
 xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi                     noarch                 7.5-31.amzn2023.0.2                     amazonlinux                 2.7 M
 xorg-x11-fonts-Type1                     noarch                 7.5-31.amzn2023.0.2                     amazonlinux                 500 k

Transaction Summary
===========================================================================================================================================
Install  25 Packages

Trying:

[ec2-user@backoffice ~]$ wkhtmltopdf
/home/ec2-user/.rvm/gems/ruby-3.2.2/gems/wkhtmltopdf-binary-0.12.6.6/bin/wkhtmltopdf_centos_6_i386: /home/ec2-user/.rvm/gems/ruby-3.2.2/gems/wkhtmltopdf-binary-0.12.6.6/bin/wkhtmltopdf_centos_6_i386: cannot execute binary file
[ec2-user@backoffice ~]$ wkhtmltoimage
wkhtmltoimage: error while loading shared libraries: libpng15.so.15: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[ec2-user@backoffice ~]$ which wkhtmltoimage
/usr/local/bin/wkhtmltoimage
[ec2-user@backoffice ~]$ cd /usr/local/bin/
[ec2-user@backoffice bin]$ ls
wkhtmltoimage  wkhtmltopdf
[ec2-user@backoffice bin]$ ./wkhtmltopdf
./wkhtmltopdf: error while loading shared libraries: libpng15.so.15: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Answer 1

Not sure whether you are looking for a solution still, but leaving this here to help someone else potentially.

This solution is not intended for aarch64, but could likely be modified to work on aarch64. wkhtmltox is dependant on specific versions of openssl and libpng which are not the versions installed by default on the Amazon Linux 2 machines. In order to make this work on aarch64 the openssl, libpng and wkhtmltox would have to be swapped for aarch64 versions:

commands:
    01_install_dependencies: 
      command: yum install --assumeyes zlib fontconfig freetype libX11 libXext libXrender xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi xorg-x11-fonts-Type1
    02_install_libpng15: 
      command: yum localinstall -y https://repo.almalinux.org/almalinux/8/AppStream/x86_64/os/Packages/libpng15-1.5.30-7.el8.x86_64.rpm
    03_install_libssl10: 
      command: yum localinstall -y https://rpmfind.net/linux/centos/8-stream/AppStream/x86_64/os/Packages/compat-openssl10-1.0.2o-4.el8.x86_64.rpm
    04_install_wkhtmltox:
      command: yum localinstall -y https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/packaging/releases/download/0.12.6-1/wkhtmltox-0.12.6-1.amazonlinux2.x86_64.rpm

Answer 2

If you are using docker, the linux generic available on version 12.3 is working for amd64:

RUN mkdir wkhtmltopdf && \
    wget -O wkhtmltox-0.12.3_linux-generic-amd64.tar.xz "https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf/releases/download/0.12.3/wkhtmltox-0.12.3_linux-generic-amd64.tar.xz" && \
    tar -xJf "wkhtmltox-0.12.3_linux-generic-amd64.tar.xz" -C wkhtmltopdf --strip-components=1 && \
    mv wkhtmltopdf/bin/wkhtmltopdf /usr/bin && \
    rm "wkhtmltox-0.12.3_linux-generic-amd64.tar.xz" -r wkhtmltopdf

If you're using locally a mac M1 that will not work because of the processor architecture, so I use this for development:

RUN mkdir wkhtmltopdf && \
    wget -O /tmp/wkhtmltox.rpm https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/packaging/releases/download/0.12.6.1-2/wkhtmltox-0.12.6.1-2.almalinux9.aarch64.rpm && \
    yum localinstall -y /tmp/wkhtmltox.rpm

I discovered this by trial and error, so hope it helps.