>
> Does anyone have an idea about how much work it would take to maintain
> python-xpcom?
>

Lots.

I don't know much about pyxpcom, but I imagine it being pretty analogous to
XPConnect (our JS<->XPCOM bridge). XPConnect is probably the most notorious
module in Gecko - it's complicated, scary, and easy to get wrong. We
already sink a ton of engineering resources into it, and wouldn't if it
weren't so fundamental to our entire architecture.

More importantly, for a number of reasons the DOM is becoming more
intimately tied to JS: we're removing the abstraction layer that
sorta-kinda makes the DOM language-agnostic (it's too slow), and we're
writing new custom DOM bindings.

So if it isn't true already, pyxpcom won't be able to script the DOM
anymore, which makes it significantly less useful. Reversing this course
(and maintaining a separate set of python DOM bindings) is pretty much out
of the question: it incurs a performance penalty for the Web that we don't
want to pay, and it would take months and months of engineering by Boris,
Kyle, Peter, Blake, Ben, Johnny, Olli, and myself to make happen.

In a nutshell, script bindings aren't easy - this stuff is some of the most
complicated and delicate code in Gecko. So the issue isn't that Benjamin is
too lazy or proud to keep the relevant embedding APIs. The issue is that
there is a very small group of people in the world who have the knowledge
to build and maintain something like this, and they have other priorities.

bholley
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