moheb missaghi wrote:
Hi, I posted this earlier and got no answers. Anyone care to drop a couple
of lines on the subject?
Hi,
I have just started reading the documentation. I am just wondering about
xpcom. Is it just a historical thing? i.e., if one is to write a new
portable app, given how close java is performing compared to the native
binary wouldn't it make sense to do it in java for simplicity and elegance?
Surely modularization can be achieved in java or for that matter c#.
Microsoft seems to be moving away from COM into managed code. Any thoughts?
Moheb emailed me, and I wrote back.
-----begin quote-----
We can't use Java, it would add ~20MB to Firefox's download footprint.
We can't use it also because it's not yet open-sourced in its common,
efficiently implemented forms, which you cite as its advantage.
We really don't want to depend on closed source, not just because of
politics, but because we need to diagnose, work around, and fix bugs in
all our core code, including any VM we depend on.
Similar comments apply to .NET/Mono, although Mono is open source (but
apparently threatened with patent suits by MS, although not in public).
XPCOM is not obsolete. Use it freely, it will be around for a long while.
-----end quote-----
I'd add also that we have managed languages such as JS and (soon to be
included by default) Python, which people should use instead of C++
where possible.
These languages offer some of the wins of the unified VM approach that
Java and C#/.NET offer. They have weaknesses that we will be working to
address in Mozilla 1.9 and 1.10. I blogged about this under "Mozilla
2.0 virtual machine goals" last year at
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/005716.html.
I'm redirecting to m.xpcom via followup-to: and cross-posting.
/be
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