[webkit-dev] Has anybody ported WebKit to a platform other than Windows or Unix?

[Kevin Ollivier]

Hi Paul,

On Jun 2, 2008, at 1:27 AM, Paul Pedriana wrote:

> I'm wondering if anybody has successfully ported WebKit to a platform
> other than Windows or Unix. I ask because I am looking into this
> possibility myself. I've looked at Mozilla and WebKit and at first
> leaned towards WebKit, as it seems to be easier to grok. But in  
> looking
> at the WebKit source it seems that there are hundreds of
> platform-specific files and a bit of the source apparently isn't
> available at all (e.g. some stuff from WebKit Support Libraries).  
> Thus I
> am becoming more pessimistic about WebKit than when I started.  
> Mozilla's
> source appears to be more portable and platform independent.
>
> However, perhaps I am missing something and am not seeing the entire
> picture. If somebody has some experience working with WebKit on a
> platform other than Windows or Unix, perhaps you can enlighten me  
> about
> the realities here.

I'm currently working on porting WebKit to the wxWidgets toolkit,  
which is portable across Windows, Mac and Linux platforms, along with  
some embedded platforms as well. Aside from a couple significant  
outstanding Linux/GTK bugs (which are mostly due to wx not having APIs  
for non-kerned text drawing), the code runs well on all three  
platforms. A complete list of ports (well, with code in WebKit trunk,  
at least) is available here:

http://trac.webkit.org/wiki

under the "WebKit Ports" section. I'm actually quite surprised to see  
how many ports are in progress, and to be honest, I think the design  
of WebCore is very well-suited to porting.

In contrast, I've personally not had good luck with embedding Mozilla  
in wx apps. It worked well on Linux, was painful on Windows every time  
we wanted to update, and on Mac/Carbon, there were too many drawing  
issues for it to be useable. I started having weird issues with  
editing support as well once the Composer project was split off as  
Nvu. Perhaps things have improved since then, but I finally decided  
that wxWebKit was worth the extra porting effort involved because in  
the end, it will be more portable, reliable, and easier to maintain,  
and so far I haven't been disappointed. (I've been mpressed by the  
strong community and all the help/support I've gotten, actually! :-)

Regards,

Kevin

>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
>
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