[webkit-dev] Adding ENABLE_NAVIGATOR_BUILDTYPE to WebCore

[Adam Barth]

On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 1:00 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 1:51 PM, Annie Sullivan <sullivan at chromium.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> I wanted to let you know that I plan to add support for
>> navigator.buildType (e.g., "nightly", "beta", "final") to WebKit. This
>> feature isn't on the standards track (but neither are a bunch of other
>> similar properties on Navigator). This feature will be behind the
>> ENABLE(NAVIGATOR_BUILDTYPE) feature define. See:
>> https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88358
>> http://html.spec.whatwg.org/#navigator
>
> What is the rationale for adding this property on the navigator object
> instead of the chrome object we also expose if your'e not expecting this
> property to be ever standarized?

Generally, we avoid implementing web visible features via the "chrome"
object because that makes them Chrome-proprietary.  In this case, it
seems entirely reasonable for other browsers (e.g., Firefox) to want
to implement this feature.  By putting it on navigator, we invite them
to implement it as well.

> The feedback the WebKit community at large has given us so far appears to be
> strictly negative about adding this to the navigator object.

The mechanism for implementing the feature doesn't really affect the
arguments that folks are making on this thread.  If we decide that the
feature is worth implementing, we should implement it on navigator.
If the feature is not worth implementing, we shouldn't implement it on
the "chrome" object either.

Adam