[webkit-dev] Is it OK to remove Frame::setIsDisconnected() and isDisconnected() ?

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Apr 9, 2012, at 12:27 PM, Adam Barth wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:
>> On Apr 15, 2009, at 1:29 PM, Sverrir Á. Berg wrote:
>>> Hi Adam,
>>> Thanks for the links.  These are simply exposing the functions as a formal a
>>> API's.  I understand that you typically don't want to change externally
>>> exposed API's but these can easily be stubbed out (or removed).
>>> I should have pointed out in my original email that I have tried to remove
>>> these API's and I can still run all the WebKit/Mac tests fine.  So at least
>>> two things are missing (IMHO) - tests that verify that this functionality is
>>> working as intended and documentation to tell what that intent is.  But this
>>> is only required if somebody is actually using these functions...
>> 
>> The API (system-private API actually, or "SPI" as we call it) in question is
>> used by Safari. I don't believe it would be safe to remove this flag. The
>> intent of the WebFrame API is that you can make a frame act (from the point
>> of view of content inside it) as if it is a top-level frame, even though it
>> is actually a subframe. One case where this might be useful is if you wanted
>> to build a custom browser-like UI partially using HTML, which could then
>> load pages as subframes without exposing that fact. It is true and
>> unfortunate that we don't have tests - the ObjC API does not have as much
>> test coverage as features exposed to Web content.
> 
> Pardon my thread necromancy, but is this SPI still used by Safari?  

Yes. It is used by the "Reader" feature of Safari.

> A brief read through the code turns up tons of bugs related to this
> feature.  Are these bugs important to fix?

Hard to say, without knowing what the specific bugs are.

Regards,
Maciej