[webkit-dev] Thought about Nix JavaScriptCore port

[Eric Wing]

On 2/7/16, Konstantin Tokarev <annulen at yandex.ru> wrote:
> Please try updated version of my branch, it now does not use LLVM unless you
> enable USE_LLVM_DISASSEMBLER.

I merged your branch. That seemed to build and work.
So what would USE_LLVM_DISAAEMBLER get me if I could build it?
Also, are there things I can do to shrink JavaScriptCore? It's now
over 20MB. I know ICU is a big part of that, but JSC itself seems to
keep getting bigger too.

To respond to a prior suggestion about ICU size, I am familiar with
the data archive option. However, there are several challenges with
that:
- I don't know what parts JSC actually needs to know what I can safely remove
- I don't know how ICU/JSC load the data archive. Android APK file
semantics are pretty terrible and you have to send around a Java
AsssetManager to access everything. Standard file library calls don't
'just work'.
- I really need to build as a static library because since it is a
private implementation detail of JSC. There are problems if somebody
downstream of me wants to use ICU, with a potentially different
version. If I dynamically link and use data archives, I open up a lot
of conflict issues. Similarly, Android itself may use ICU internally
and I've been warned of conflict problems by others. Static linking
avoids these headaches. Also, I haven't figured out if data archive
and static libraries are compatible.
- I did notice Apple has a modified, stripped down version of ICU as
part of Darwin. I was unable to figure out how to get it built. It was
a pretty complicated Makefile.


Thanks,
Eric

P.S.
Here is an indentation fix for my previous ICU patch.
https://github.com/ewmailing/webkit/commit/e2c94e8b126143402b4e17cc514c4df412de5ace