wkhtmltopdf deprecation and removal

Frappe deprecated wkhtmltopdf in v16 and removes support in v17 in favor of Chromium. Frappe Docker is preparing for this transition while preserving compatibility with supported versions. See Frappe PDF generation.

Optional installation

The INSTALL_WKHTMLTOPDF build argument controls whether production, custom, and bench images include wkhtmltopdf. It defaults to true; setting it to false skips downloading and installing wkhtmltopdf when building an image. Docker Buildx Bake accepts the same setting through the shell environment, and the reusable test and publish workflows expose it as install_wkhtmltopdf.

This is a build-time choice. Existing images and site printing settings are unaffected. A v16 deployment opting out must use Chromium for its site defaults and any print formats that explicitly select wkhtmltopdf, and verify its PDF output. Chromium must remain available in the image.

Layered images inherit this choice from their base and build images. Omitting wkhtmltopdf requires building those images with the option disabled before building the layered image.

See Build Setup for the build argument reference.

Planned removal

• v15 and v16: Published erpnext, base, and build images continue to include wkhtmltopdf for compatibility. The shared bench image also keeps it while v16 is supported. Custom builds can opt out with INSTALL_WKHTMLTOPDF=false.
• v17: When v17 is released, its published images will be built without wkhtmltopdf. Installation support remains available for supported older versions that still use it.
• v18: When v18 is released, support for v16 will be dropped. Since v16 is the last Frappe version with wkhtmltopdf support, wkhtmltopdf installation code and the INSTALL_WKHTMLTOPDF option will then be removed entirely, including from the bench image build.