[webkit-dev] WebKitGtk network backend

[Christian Dywan]

Heya,

the Gtk port of WebKit currently supports two network backends, that is
Curl and libSoup. The plan always was to improve libSoup to an extend
where it supersedes Curl, but libSoup is deemed not mature enough up to
this day. As far as I'm aware most of the Gtk contributors are
in favour of dropping Curl and supporting only libSoup.

If libSoup is the only backend, we can easily make use of libSoup API
in applications, which means we don't have to dublicate interfaces in
WebKit. And distributions will build one WebKit build, instead of half
of them using a different backend. In the end libSoup will become as
stable as it has to be, if the time invested in maintaining Curl
support can instead go into improving the libSoup code.

Note that with regard to packaging, libSoup is "a walk in the park"
compared to WebKit, it is built easily and quickly. And it is
portable, that is it doesn't depend on GNOME and it is usable for
instance on Win32. As far as stability is concerned, libSoup surely
isn't less stable than rendering or scripting in WebKit trunk.

So, I'd like to suggest to make libSoup the only backend. We would then
require a recent (unstable) libSoup, similar to how Gtk+ depends
on the latest (unstable) Glib. Xan Lopez has agreed already on IRC.

Of course, we actually have a use case, that is we agreed to introduce
libSoup specific API:

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22624

If anyone has a good reason for not doing this, please speak up now or
remain silent forever ^_^

Yours,
    Christian