[webkit-help] Exporting WebCore API

[Ryosuke Niwa]

On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 4:49 PM, Thomas Palmer <tjpalmer at tjpalmer.com>wrote:
>
> This has probably been asked before, although I haven't used the right
> search terms.
>
> I would __LOVE__ to use WebCore as a C++ library, and it has all these
> wonderful things like WebGLRenderingContext and dom things and whatnot. I'd
> have little need to use another UI toolkit in my life, so far as I'd be
> concerned. But none of it is exported in the public WebKit interface, nor
> is it available, for example, in the webkitgtk so file.
>
> I have seen the partial Chromium interface (having tried it first through
> Chromium itself), and I see that WebKit2 is exposing a bit at least in a C
> interface. Also, apparently the internal WebCore APIs are considered
> unstable. Is all this correct?
>
> What is the game plan for the future on this front?
>

http://www.webkit.org/projects/goals.html
WebKit is not a bundle of maximally general and reusable code.
We build some general-purpose parts, but only to the degree needed to be a
good web content engine.

So if your plan is to re-use our code for other purposes, we're unlikely to
accommodate that.

If I went to the effort of trying putting exports on all the WebCore APIs
> using a #define that is turned off by default, could that possibly be an
> acceptable patch? How unstable is WebCore? I'm inclined to think I'd be
> willing to ride with the flow if it's at least semi-stable, and I suspect
> WebKit maintainers also feel little need to churn too much.
>

What are you referring to by WebCore APIs? We refactor and change class
names, methods, etc... in WebCore all the time. WebKit API is there
explicitly for this purpose so that we don't have to be constrained by
external projects.

- Ryosuke
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