[webkit-dev] WebKitGtk network backend

[Holger Freyther]

On Tuesday 23 December 2008 16:28:59 Dan Winship wrote:
> Christian Dywan wrote:
> > in fact Glib is a requirement, libSoup relies essentially on features
> > of the GObject system. But that is already it. There are no Gnomish
> > requirements on top of that, the libsoup-gnome library is optional and
> > not needed for normal functionality.
>
> Actually, libsoup requires libxml2 too (for XML-RPC support), although
> it could be changed to use a native Windows XML API on Windows, if
> someone wrote a patch.
>
> But that's it, and the entire point of libsoup-gnome is that I don't
> want to add any more dependencies to libsoup itself.


Let us not mix issues. We are not proposing to remove the curl implementation 
from WebCore (I'm aware that Windows, WX are using it) but we are at a cross 
road for the WebKit/Gtk+ API.

From what I know we have the need to export networking (and cookies) and have 
a couple of options....

1.) Export a curl and soup handle in the API, and depending on whatever 
someone (e.g. a distro) used to configure the API exposing curl/soup will 
return a Null pointer... A user of the API would have to implement both soup 
and curl as he does not know which the final version will use...

2.) Design a network abstraction... alienate both soup and curl people....

3.) pick curl
4.) pick soup


From what I know 1st and 2nd are no options. So it is either curl or soup and 
soup has a lot of what we need and aligns nicely with Glib/Gtk+ and the 
current consumers (epiphany/midori) already use the soup backend, gstreamer is 
using it as well. For me soup looks like the clear winner (even if I still 
need to install the dev packages).


z.

PS: libxml2 is used by WebCore as well