[webkit-dev] Q: Webkit on Windows without COM registration (as wrapped DLL only?)

[Thomas Brodt]

Hey Christian, thanks for the instant answer!

Sounds good with the plain API for the gtk port. After a look at the 
header files and the main.c mentioned I'm not sure how to deal with the 
different types that are defined there as return values or function 
arguments.

GObject, WebKitWebView, and all the other G* and WebKit* , can they 
simply be mapped to e.g. ulong or alike (just like "handles") to deal 
with them in function calls from an existing external program that has 
no knowledge of gtk? As you certainly note I'm not a C programmer at 
all, nor do I know very much about advanced C API design and DLLs, 
especially in combination with C++ or Objective C and the bridge between 
classes and plain C.

Of course this way of integration via a callable function library DLL 
would also require that these functions are exported from some dll that 
may not yet exist. I assume that there is no wrapper dll yet that just 
exports the gtk function layer around webkit, say a gtkwebkit.dll. Most 
developers will just use the libs when they compile their program - 
which is quite different with me here (just imagine it is like 
VisualBasic where you have to import functions with their signature from 
a dll). So I would have to create an otherwise empty wrapper DLL that 
just exports the gtk functions that gtk wraps around webkit.dll. Right?

Again, thanks for any pointers

Thomas


Christian Dywan schrieb:
> Am Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:40:48 +0100
> schrieb Thomas Brodt <thomas.brodt at porabo.ch>:
>
>   
>> Hi list
>>
>> as far as I have learned until now, there are several ways to use
>> Webkit as an embeddable component in Windows applications. Maybe some
>> wise on this list could help me out with some more answers that I
>> couldn't find in days googling around.
>>
>> One way to use Webkit on windows is the COM component which exposes
>> some COM Interfaces that can be used to drive Webkit (I use Brent
>> Fulgham's cairo based port without the Apple DLLs). This approach
>> seems to work quite well as far as may experiments went. However,
>> this COM solution requires that webkit.dll is registered with the
>> Windows OS. This may be an issue in managed environments where
>> restricted users cannot register the DLL after copying it in the
>> application directory, so COM won't work for them. Or if several
>> copies of Webkit in different version for different deployed
>> applications are installed on a system, this may lead to problems,
>> because only one path can be registered for the COM component.
>>
>> The alternative - that I would also prefer over a COM wrapper - would
>> be a DLL with a plain C callable interface. I just can use DLLs with
>> their exported functions, not compile my program with dll usage. Does
>> the gtk+ port support an API that can be used that way? I assume I
>> would get some kind of handle for webview instances that must be
>> given to each API call.
>>     
>
> Hey Thomas,
>
> with regard to the gtk port:
>
> Just have a look at WebKit/gtk/webkit/*.h for API and
> WebKitTools/GtkLauncher/main.c for a simple example. The gtk port
> relies on plain C interfaces, based on GObject and it is indeed common
> to have a folder with a bunch of dynamic link libraries in the same
> place as the application, on Win32 that is.
>
> ciao,
>     Christian
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