Hi folks, On Wednesday, August 7, Matt Miller and I (Nick Alexander) met with Jason Duell and Valentin Gosu to discuss using Necko in non-Gecko contexts. Sadly I was unable to record the discussion, but I was able to take partial notes <https://docs.google.com/document/d/13ZqcDtmedjAykVveOlZSFYP5tWi2i6G5dCzUuHEBY0U/edit#heading=h.9rqnw7pbheyi> .
The discussion split into two contexts: 1. Necko in non-GeckoView Android Apps like Notes and Lockbox for Android. - Desirable, but there will (almost) always be two network stacks: the built-in WebView stack and the “other” stack used for FxA, Sync, other services. - Engineering work to “slim down” the equivalent of `libxul.so` to be feasible to ship is too great to invest in now. - Jason suggested a Rust binding to `libcurl` might be a better approach. 2. Necko in GeckoView-consuming Android Apps for non-Gecko uses. - Desirable to avoid “second network stack” problems that we have in Firefox for Android: dated cipher suites, inconsistent SNI support, proxy configuration mismatches. - Engineering work to stage XPCOM startup so that Necko is available to background services (like Sync) without starting the entire browser is seen as feasible and is in line with existing efforts to start Gecko headless before upgrading to headed functionality for, e.g., push notifications and service workers. The immediate next step is for Jason to meet with the GeckoView team to plan investigations into item 2). For item 1), the relevant non-GeckoView Android Apps intend to ship as many network stacks as are needed. Many thanks to Jason and Valentin for their patience and expertise! Yours, Nick (for Matt, Jason, and Valentin)
_______________________________________________ Sync-dev mailing list Sync-dev@mozilla.org https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/sync-dev