[webkit-dev] Merging the iOS port to svn.webkit.org (Re: WebCore and interlocking threads)

[Maciej Stachowiak]

Hi Peter,

On Feb 9, 2013, at 3:48 PM, Peter Kasting <pkasting at google.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 11:52 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:
> There are certainly pros and cons to merging. It would be great get input from the broader WebKit community on the tradeoff of merging sooner vs avoidance of weird legacy code in the main tree. In the meantime, we'll stick to merging things that are not overly controversial as much as we can.
> 
> For what my opinion is worth (probably near zero for a lot of you), I would like to see you guys merge sooner rather than later, even if it leads to awkwardness that needs cleanup.  Over the years there has been a nonzero amount of friction due to the iOS port not being upstreamed, and I think it would be beneficial to WebKit as a whole to fix that sooner rather than later.  And it seems more likely to me that "upstream first, then decide how to re-architect as needed" is going to result in high-quality discussions and designs, as opposed to "figure out in private how to re-architect before upstreaming", which runs the risk of just never bothering to upstream at all.
> 
> There is real compromise, and perhaps humility, needed from all sides to make such a task successful.  I am reminded of Eric's recent email where he pleaded for more of an explicit effort to civility towards each other.  Perhaps this is an opportunity for us to practice that effort.

I really appreciate you saying that. I feel the same way. For years we've been saying that we need to fix N different things before upstreaming, and in the end we concluded that it was just delaying us from upstreaming at all. And we concluded that cleaning up some of the questionable choices in the open would lead to a better final outcome.

At the same time, I think some scrutiny of what we are doing is fair, so I'll try to explain the threading issues in a bit more detail to the extent I can.

Regards,
Maciej

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