Building browser images

The images repository ships a Go tool that builds Docker images for every supported browser. Docker build files are embedded in the binary, so one command produces a complete image.

What is inside an image

Each image consists of 3 layers:

1. Base layer — everything every image needs: Xvfb, fonts for all major scripts (Latin, Cyrillic, CJK, Indic, Thai, Arabic, emoji), all UTF-8 locales, timezone data, x11vnc and PulseAudio. Built once as websummoner/browser-base.
2. Browser layer — the browser binary, installed from the vendor’s official package repository or from a .deb file.
3. Driver layer — the matching WebDriver binary (or the WebSummoner server for the Selenium-based Firefox variant).

Building the tool

git clone https://github.com/WebSummoner/images.git
cd images
go build
./images --help

Building an image

The -b flag always takes an exact package version — partial versions are not resolved, and a version the vendor never published fails the build instead of silently falling back to something else.

# Chrome (version is the google-chrome-stable package version)
./images chrome -b 152.0.7977.64-1 -t websummoner/chrome:152

# Firefox (version is the Mozilla apt package version)
./images firefox -b 155.0~build1 -t websummoner/firefox:155

# Edge (driver version must match the browser version)
./images edge -b 152.0.4191.53-1 -d 152.0.4191.53 -t websummoner/edge:152

# Opera (omit -d: the driver is resolved automatically, see the note below)
./images opera -b 135.0.5973.66-1 -t websummoner/opera:135

# Yandex (driver version is the YandexDriver Linux asset version)
./images yandex -b 26.6.1.1083-1 -d 26.6.1 -t websummoner/yandex:26.6

Opera drivers are resolved automatically

Do not pass -d for Opera unless you have a specific reason. operachromiumdriver release tags follow the Chromium version Opera is built on, not Opera’s own line — Opera N ships Chromium N+16 — so pinning by Opera’s line fetches a driver many majors too old, which refuses every session. The tool works out the Chromium line, prefers Opera’s own driver when one exists for it, and otherwise falls back to the newest published operadriver — never a chromedriver, which starts sessions but crashes the renderer on page-opened windows. The version check in this driver family is only a warning, so a driver one line behind still works. The image label records which one was used.

Omitting -d (or passing latest) lets the tool pick the newest matching driver. For Brave, the tool detects the embedded Chromium version from the built image and downloads the matching chromedriver automatically.

To build from a local Debian package instead of a repository, pass the file path — the file name must contain the full version, because the tool derives the browser version from it:

./images firefox -b /path/to/firefox_155.0.0_amd64.deb -t websummoner/firefox:155

Add --test to run the container test suite after building (requires the websummoner-container-tests checkout next to the images repository), and --push to push the image to the registry.

Tagging

Images published by RIADVICE follow the tag policy: a floating line tag, a major.minor alias and an immutable full-version pin. When building for yourself, pass several -t flags to apply the same convention.

Browser channels

The --channel flag selects a non-stable package for browsers that publish one in the same repository:

Browser	Channel	Package
Chrome	beta	google-chrome-beta
Chrome	dev	google-chrome-unstable
Edge	beta	microsoft-edge-beta
Edge	dev	microsoft-edge-dev
Opera	beta	opera-beta
Opera	dev	opera-developer

Firefox channel variants previously relied on Ubuntu PPAs that no longer exist; build from a .deb file of the desired channel instead.