[webkit-dev] Feature flags and ports

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Sep 25, 2008, at 11:29 AM, Avi Drissman wrote:

> In WebKit, PLATFORM(MAC) means a lot of things, and one thing in  
> particular it means is to use NSURLResponse. I filed https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20890 
>  with a patch, and it kicked up a storm.
>
> It seemed like there was fundamental disagreement about what the  
> meaning of PLATFORM(MAC) really was. Did it mean "use Mac APIs"?  
> Perhaps it's "Apple's Mac port".
>
> I'll take my position, that PLATFORM(MAC) means that WebKit should  
> use core Mac APIs. Not ones that are replaceable (like NSURL, since  
> we're replacing that with our own loaders), but the core ones like  
> Cocoa UI APIs, etc. There's a fine line there; after all, anything's  
> replaceable with enough effort. That's fine; I'm happy with leaving  
> most things as PLATFORM(MAC) and then, if need be, split them off  
> into USE(SOMEFEATURE).

My own opinion (and what I would say is maybe a rough consensus on th  
list) is that PLATFORM(MAC) means "use Cocoa UI stuff" and the  
networking code under PLATFORM(MAC) should be changed to  
USE(NSURLCONNECTION), to parallel USE(CFNETWORK), USE(CURL),  
USE(SOUP), etc. One can certainly imagine a port that uses Cocoa UI  
but not the NSURLConnection networking code. I could even imagine the  
version of WebKit that ships with Mac OS X using a different network  
library someday, perhaps CFNetwork instead of NSURLConnection.

Regards,
Maciej

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