[webkit-dev] Proposal: Remove ENABLE(SVG)

[Steven Coul (scoul)]

My big worry about that, is that somewhere somebody is thinking about using that argument to add Flash and/or Moonlight to Webkit - and down that path madness lies ;-)

There really aren’t any “size-hogs” in WK other than SVG itself - but it’s been a while since I looked I admit.

I tend to think of “fork it” as a last desperate measure rather than first plan - but whatever - I was just interested in others opinions since I don’t have a horse in this race anyhow.

Steve "Harry" Coul
scoul at cisco.com



On Feb 4, 2014, at 8:52 AM, Dirk Schulze <krit at webkit.org> wrote:

> 
> On Feb 4, 2014, at 5:20 AM, Steven Coul (scoul) <scoul at cisco.com> wrote:
> 
>> I agree, the time taken to build is not really a good reason for the change or lack of - as you point out there, are many other ways to optimize the build process/server which will have wider benefits.
>> 
>> But does anybody consider size to be an issue? SVG adds a fair chunk to the size of a binary - especially in debug builds - which is not very friendly to embedded systems.
>> 
>> ( Real embedded, not just a small form factor $500 PC running Windows etc )
>> 
>> I know in general WK seems to be aimed at desktop, big mobile etc - and we tend to ignore anything not directly related to the the main builds, but even on a desktop I wouldn’t mind seeing a crusade to make things smaller. One day I’ll see my whole OS in L1 Cache……..
> 
> In this case you may want to branch WebKit and remove more than just SVG.
> 
> WebKit is a browser engine and should display web content. There is no doubt anymore that SVG is an integral part of the web. That is the the only decision that matters here IMO.
> 
> Greetings,
> Dirk
> 
>> 
>> Steve "Harry" Coul
>> scoul at cisco.com
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Feb 4, 2014, at 6:11 AM, Osztrogonác Csaba <oszi at inf.u-szeged.hu> wrote:
>> 
>>> Xabier Rodríguez Calvar írta:
>>>> Sorry for the late answer, but I was in Brussels at FOSDEM.
>>>> O Ven, 31-01-2014 ás 14:01 +0100, Alberto Garcia escribiu:
>>>>> Not in the GTK+ port at least, I've been able to do builds without
>>>>> SVG perfectly fine, so there's probably something else wrong in your
>>>>> environment or the port you're using.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Anyway, I'm also fine with removing it.
>>>> It saves some times in our builds and I always use it unless I have to
>>>> do something with SVG.
>>>> I would keep it unless it doesn't pay off the effort of maintaining it.
>>>> Br.
>>> 
>>> I've checked the full clean build time of GTK port on a quad core i5-2320 (3GHz) machine with icecc buildfarm and -j30 makeflag:
>>> - with SVG disabled:"WebKit is now built (11m:58s)."
>>> - with SVG enabled: "WebKit is now built (13m:38s)."
>>> 
>>> The difference isn't so big. But it was clean build, I don't think if
>>> developers always do clean builds. If you don't touch SVG related files,
>>> the build time shouldn't depend on enabled/disabled SVG.
>>> 
>>> In my opinion the ENABLE(SVG) flag is not to speed up clean builds, but
>>> disable SVG if you don't want to ship it. There are so many way to speed
>>> up builds:
>>> - use more cores, use icecc buildfarm, use ccache
>>> - get rid of include paths and use module relative includes
>>> (But it can be a separated thread if anybody is interested in it.)
>>> 
>>> Ossy
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>> 
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