[webkit-dev] WebKit modularization

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Feb 24, 2012, at 9:57 AM, Alexey Proskuryakov wrote:

> 
> 22.02.2012, в 22:08, Kentaro Hara написал(а):
> 
>> TL;DR: We are starting WebKit modularization. Self-contained features
>> like WebAudio, WebSocket, IndexedDB, File APIs ...etc will be moved
>> from WebCore/ to WebCore/Modules/.
> 
> Looking at patches that are actually getting landed, they go far beyond this idea. See e.g. bug 79436 - "Move HTML-related APIs from DOMWindow.idl to DOMWindowHTML.idl". How is HTML a self-contained feature?
> 
> I see a lot of downside in such refactoring, and don't really see any benefit:
> 
> 1) It gets very hard to navigate source code, as you never know where a given function is. You can't find it, you can't see if it's even there without a full code search.
> 2) The division lines are very arbitrary. For example, bug 79434 moved "XML-related" APIs to a separate file, including window.XMLDocument, which is as core to DOM as it gets.
> 3) The moves don't respect original licenses - e.g. DOMWindowXML.idl is LGPL, while DOMWindow.idl is BSD.
> 4) More files means longer build times.
> 
> I think that most of the patches landed under this umbrella should be reconsidered, and most immediately those that had license wrong.

I too am surprised that HTML-related APIs would be refactored as a result of modularization. This change may be justifiable on its own merits, but it doesn't seem like a logical part of a project to make self-contained features more modular. At the very least, to avoid confusion, changes like that should be kept clearly separate from the modularization effort, or else, someone could explain the relationship if there is one and its not obvious.

Regards,
Maciej