[webkit-dev] WebKit and Android

[Andrei Popescu]

Hello WebKit!

We would like to give an update about WebKit on Android. A while ago,
we started the effort to upstream the Android port of WebKit. For a
variety of reasons, this work took longer than anticipated and was
never finished. We realize that the incomplete Android port that
exists today in WebKit ToT has caused quite a bit of confusion and
inconvenience to the project as a whole and we are very sorry for
that.

Over time, the Android Browser has come to share more and more code
with Chrome (both WebKit and Chromium). This approach has a number of
advantages for the WebKit community:

1. Android WebKit no longer requires a separate build system because
we are able to reuse Chromium’s gyp system for building.
2. Android no longer requires a separate set of WebCore clients,
platform abstractions, and embedder APIs because Android shares much
of this code with the Chromium port.
3. The Android layout tests results more closely match chromium-linux
and more expected results can be shared.

We plan to start by setting up a webkit.org build bot that will
compile Chromium’s DRT for Android using the Android NDK, SDK and
toolchain. We anticipate a reasonably small set of changes to the
Chromium port to achieve this. We’re fully committed to maintaining
this new flavor of the Chromium port of WebKit and having a build bot
up and running as soon as possible will make this an easier task. At
the same time, we will be removing the existing incomplete Android
port. This includes the Android-specific code in
WebCore/platform/android, as well as any code guarded by the
PLATFORM(ANDROID) macro.

We’re looking forward to a much better collaboration with the WebKit
community and we’d be very grateful to receive any feedback on this
plan.

Thanks,
Andrei, Steve, Ben