[webkit-dev] Queries regarding few Components in webkit

[Rajagopalan Gangadharan]

This is great, thank you so much!

On Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 8:59 PM Adrian Perez de Castro <aperez at igalia.com>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> On Sun, 17 Mar 2019 09:08:10 -0500, Michael Catanzaro <
> mcatanzaro at igalia.com> wrote:
>
> > It might be more realistic to try making an existing WebKit port work
> > on Haiku (either WebKitGTK or WPE WebKit) rather than try to create an
> > entirely new port.
>
> You are forgetting that there is an existing, well-maintained WebKit1
> port for Haiku. *That* should be the basis for a port to WebKit2. The
> repository is available at:
>
>   https://github.com/haiku/webkit
>
> As a matter of fact, according to the README in that repository, there
> is already some ongoing effort to support WebKit2 in the Haiku port. You
> should look into that instead of potentially wasting time redoing work
> that has already been done by others.
>
> > Previously you indicated that you were planning to create a new network
> > backend for Haiku; that alone would be enough to occupy a developer
> > full-time for a long while and doesn't seem very realistic. But that's
> > just one small portion of developing and maintaining an entire WebKit
> > port. Taking an existing port and making it run on Haiku would be much
> > easier.
>
> Haiku has its own “libnetapi” system library, so IMO the goal should be
> making WebKit use it (if it doesn't already — note that I am not familiar
> with the insides of the Haiku WebKit port). You can see it in the upstream
> repository here:
>
>   https://git.haiku-os.org/haiku/tree/src/kits/network/libnetapi
>
> Its API documentation is available here:
>
>   https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/api/group__network.html
>
> If using this is impossible, hard, or would need a lot of work in Haiku's
> network library, then I would suggest using WebKit's libcurl network
> backend
> to have something working at first (because the code it's already in the
> WebKit repository and is known to work), and *then* once you have the rest
> of the WebKit2 port running, look into switching from libcurl to Haiku's
> built-in network library.
>
> > On Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 7:38 AM, Rajagopalan Gangadharan
> > <g.raju2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > What is a WKRetainPtr ? where can I use it?
> >
> > It's a smart pointer for holding ownership of C API types, which you
> > shouldn't be using. The C API is not stable and is slowly being
> > retired. If you really don't want to use WebKitGTK or WPE WebKit, then
> > you should create your own separate public API based on WebKit
> > internals, not based on the C API. If you use the C API, your port will
> > be difficult to maintain in the long run.
>
> Agreed. Your public API should use Haiku types and existing conventions.
> A good first step would be to check the exiting API for Haiku's WebKit1
> port (see above, I linked the repository), keep the parts that still make
> sense in a WebKit2 world, and add and modify others as necessary.
>
> You can get more inspiration for API design from:
>
>  - The Haiku documentation itself: https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/api/
>  - The public APIs for existing WebKit2 ports:
>     * The GTK/WPE ports (both have a rather similar GLib-based API):
>           https://webkitgtk.org/reference/webkit2gtk/stable/index.html
>         * The Qt port (the code for it is also in its own repo):
>           https://github.com/annulen/webkit
>         * The Cocoa ports (which has both Objective-C and Swift APIs):
>           https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit
>
> > > What is WKContext and WKView (I think Webview is different from
> > > WKView) -> as far my understanding is Context like the context menu
> > > an os offers (ie right clicking provides copy,paste etc.)
> >
> > No, it's a library context object (corresponding to WebProcessPool). If
> > you have two web contexts, you effectively have two separate instances
> > of WebKit (e.g. separate NetworkProcess, separate data storage
> > directories, separate everything) to avoid shared global state.
> >
> > > and View is where rendering takes place?
> >
> > This is correct.
> >
> > Good luck,
>
> I also wish you a fun time hacking on WebKit, but *please* do make sure to
> contact the Haiku developers and coordinate with them to avoid duplicating
> efforts. Making a new WebKit port is a big task, and you will certainly
> have
> much better chances of succeeding by making the most of existing work and
> having the support of developers with knowledge of the target platform.
>
> Regards,
>
>
> -Adrián
>
> P.S: I am a bit of a BeOS fan myself, unfortunately I haven't used daily
> for a
> long time, and never developed anything for the platform. I would love to
> see
> Haiku have a working WebKit2 port for the platform!
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/attachments/20190317/a7ff4526/attachment.html>