[webkit-dev] Using Google-URL in WebKit

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Oct 2, 2008, at 2:41 PM, Peter Kasting wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com>  
> wrote:
> I consider the option of completely
> replacing WebKit's URL implementation with an external dependency to
> be a nonstarter.
>
> Assume that we wound up in a world where GURL formed the basis of  
> the WebKit URL implementation.  Does this statement mean you would  
> copy the GURL sources into the WebKit tree and periodically recopy  
> (kind of like Chromium does with a number of its dependencies, e.g.  
> libxml, libjpeg, etc.)?  Or that you would copy once and then ignore  
> upstream (i.e. fork)?  Or that you would not be willing to even  
> consider basing anything off GURL code unless it moved from its  
> current repository into the WebKit tree as its sole home (making it  
> hard for any other project to use it)? Or some other possibility  
> I've missed?

Something that we had to do extra work to merge periodically would  
probably still seem like effectively an external dependency.

>
> There are already various dependencies of WebKit on other projects'  
> code (e.g. sqlite) so I guess I'm trying to figure out how to parse  
> this statement and whether you're saying that this section of the  
> code is subject to different requirements.  At least in the Chromium  
> codebase, having pieces like googleurl be pulled in as external  
> dependencies has not been problematic at all, and has been useful  
> for other projects.

We tend to use external dependencies when we don't have existing code  
to do the job, where an external library does the job, where the  
amount of code to write it ourselves would be large, and where the  
facility in question does not seem to be core to doing the work of a  
Web browser.

We do not generally replace existing working code with an external  
dependency. We write our own new code rather than using a library when  
the other conditions above are not met.

We are applying these concepts equally to the database code (large,  
complex facility; existing sqlite library does the job; we didn't have  
existing code to implement a SQL database; SQL database is not core to  
a browser) and the URL code (pretty small amount of code; we have  
existing code that works; URL parsing is core to a browser.

Regards,
Maciej

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