[webkit-dev] Changes in QtWebKit development

[Oliver Hunt]

On Oct 1, 2013, at 12:50 AM, Allan Sandfeld Jensen <kde at carewolf.com> wrote:

> On Monday 30 September 2013, Oliver Hunt wrote:
>> On Sep 30, 2013, at 7:41 AM, Allan Sandfeld Jensen <kde at carewolf.com> wrote:
>>> Some of this is exactly the reason we want to keep Qt WebKit alive. It
>>> may never be possible to fully replace Qt WebKit with anything
>>> Blink/Chromium based.
>> 
>> I really don’t understand this, there are only two options:
>> 1. Qt Webkit is critical to you and you want to support and maintain it,
>> and do all the work necessary for that; or 2. Qt WebKit is not critical,
>> and so you could simply branch and have a permanent stable release
>> platform similar to what the S60 port did years ago.
>> 
>> Currently you seem to be arguing for a third option, wherein all of the
>> WebKit developers need to deal with your port, and be hamstrung by the
>> numerous invasive Qt-isms scattered throughout the codebase, for a port
>> that isn’t considered critical to its own platform.
>> 
> Actually I am arguing we should get rid of most of the invasive Qt'ism unless 
> they are really required for Qt WebKit to even work. Many of them were only 
> necessary due to having to support so many platforms. With a more narrow focus 
> we can hopefully get rid of 90% of the burden. If it turns out not to be 
> possible in the end, we can always leave after having helped as far as we 
> could.
> 

But why should webkit have _any_ burden when Qt itself cares so little about QtWebKit that it is happy to have qtisms that were ostensibly necessary for performance, etc removed?

My reading of that is that you are more willing to have the quality of QtWebKit deteriorate than to simply fork off a final high quality stable branch.

I don’t believe WebKit should be taking _any_ burden for a port that is primarily focused on a completely separate fork in an unrelated tree.

So could you please say whether the QtWebKit plan going forward is option 1 or option 2.

—Oliver

> Best regards
> `Allan

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/attachments/20131001/ee7fa58d/attachment.html>