[webkit-dev] Announcing WebKit2

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Apr 9, 2010, at 7:14 AM, Adam Treat wrote:

> On Friday 09 April 2010 06:24:51 am Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>> Given what proportion of overall maintenance work on WebKit I done by
>> Apple, I don't think anyone is entitled to veto us adding a new API
>
> Whaa?  Who is talking about veto of Apple's work?  Rather, I am  
> suggesting
> that it would have been helpful if people in the broader community  
> had a
> chance to review and discuss the patches before they were summarily  
> landed.
>
> To be clear, I have not had a chance to review the patches (I'm  
> actually
> pretty excited by the ideas and I've no doubt the work is technically
> excellent given the people involved) and see what is going on before  
> they were
> pushed into the tree.  It just would have been nice to give the  
> *community*
> more of a heads up and a chance to have a look and offer opinions.   
> This isn't
> about 'Apple' and 'veto' so much as it is about a significant new  
> piece of tech
> being added to WebKit without going through the common procedure  
> where a bug
> is opened a patch is attached webkit-dev is notified and people have  
> a chance
> to discuss and poke a little.

There were in fact bugs opened with patches attached, and webkit-dev  
was notified before any of the patches were committed afaik. However,  
the "new piece of tech" really is just a new API layer for the Mac and  
Win ports. We are interested in other people being able to reuse this  
technology, but fundamentally, this is an extension of our existing  
APIs.

> It just felt a little rushed especially so that the new stuff is  
> being landed
> with style errors.  I normally wouldn't quibble with style issues,  
> but others
> have and new ports have been required to fix any and all styling  
> issues before
> landing.

Agree, it was not good to commit with style errors and we should try  
to fix them promptly.

>
>> layer. I also recall that when the Chromium API layer was added, no
>> one asked permission, you just let us know that it was coming. Which
>> is fine - API layers are pretty low cost, and I hope no one would
>> argue against a major contributor including theirs. What's more, this
>> is really a parallel version of existing well-maintained API  
>> layers. I
>> do not like the implication that Apple should have to ask permission
>> for what we do with the WebKit API on Mac OS X. We do not ask the Qt
>> or Gtk developers to explain all their API choices.
>
> Again, I think it'd be good to get away from 'Apple' vs 'Others'.  The
> community as a whole has some fairly common procedures for landing  
> large
> changes like this.  This just felt a bit rushed.  And no doubt I was  
> a bit
> taken by the name 'WebKit2'.

It was in retrospect not a good choice of name. We hoped it would be a  
very boring choice. Think of it as WebKit/mac/async/ or something and  
see if you might feel differently.

Regards,
Maciej