Step 1 — install required dependencies

You may or may not have most of these on your Ubuntu system. I found that most of these were required to start the PhantomJS build.Here are the ones that I’ve confirmed I needed:

• autoconf2.13


• pkg-config


• build-essential


• qt5-qmake


• g++


• python


• ruby


• perl


• sqlite


• flex


• bison


• gperf


• openssl


• fontconfig


• xorg


• xorg-dev


• xutils-dev


• xcb-proto


• libtool


• libsqlite0


• libssl-dev


• libsqlite3-dev


• libfontconfig1-dev


• libicu-dev


• libfreetype6


• libssl-dev


• libpng-dev


• libpng12-dev


• libjpeg-dev


• libx11-dev


• libxext-dev


• libxcb-xkb-dev

Installing the packages went smoothly:

sudo apt-get install autoconf2.13 pkg-config build-essential qt5-qmake g++ python ruby perl sqlite flex bison gperf openssl fontconfig xorg xorg-dev xutils-dev xcb-proto libtool libsqlite0 libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev libfontconfig1-dev libicu-dev libfreetype6 libssl-dev libpng-dev libpng12-dev libjpeg-dev libx11-dev libxext-dev libxcb-xkb-dev x11proto-core-dev libxcb-render-util0 libqt5webkit5-dev

Step 2 — clone the Git repo to local drive:

git clone git://github.com/ariya/phantomjs.git
Cloning into ‘phantomjs’…
remote: Counting objects: 63695, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (37/37), done.
remote: Total 63695 (delta 16), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 63657
Receiving objects: 100% (63695/63695), 129.05 MiB | 4.08 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (31013/31013), done.
Checking connectivity… done.

cd phantomjs

git checkout 2.1.1
Note: checking out ‘2.1.1’.
[…]
HEAD is now at d9cda3d… Set version to “2.1.1”

git submodule init
Submodule ‘3rdparty-win’ (https://github.com/Vitallium/phantomjs-3rdparty-win.git) registered for path ‘src/qt/3rdparty’
Submodule ‘qtbase’ (https://github.com/Vitallium/qtbase.git) registered for path ‘src/qt/qtbase’
Submodule ‘qtwebkit’ (https://github.com/Vitallium/qtwebkit.git) registered for path ‘src/qt/qtwebkit’

git submodule update
Cloning into ‘src/qt/3rdparty’…
Cloning into ‘src/qt/qtbase’…
Cloning into ‘src/qt/qtwebkit’…

python build.py
—————————————-
WARNING
—————————————-

Building PhantomJS from source takes a very long time, anywhere from 30 minutes
to several hours (depending on the machine configuration). It is recommended to
use the premade binary packages on supported operating systems.

For details, please go the the web site: http://phantomjs.org/download.html.

Do you want to continue (Y/n)? Y

NOTE: If you want to suppress the warning regarding perils of the long compile, you an use the –confirm flag to bypass the question. This is really helpful if you want to background the process and write it to a log. Where I find this most beneficial is when I want to/need to close the terminal window before the compile completes.

Here is an optional method of running that will background the process, auto-reply to the warning and write to a log file:

nohup ./build.sh –confirm –jobs 1 > build.log &

You might carp about not being able to monitor progress now! Well sure you can.. just do a following tail on the file. Exact command varies with system, I’ll provide the one for typical LINUX and for typical OSX: