Forwarded from Vincent Untz, since he's not registered on the ML ;) -----
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 05:56:46 +0100 From: Vincent Untz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Gustavo Noronha Silva <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: webkit-dev@lists.webkit.org Subject: Re: Moving forward with WebKit/GTK+ Hi, (please keep me cc'ed on replies, since I'm not subscribed to webkit-dev) Le mardi 28 octobre 2008, à 17:04 -0200, Gustavo Noronha Silva a écrit : > * DISCLAIMER: I am not speaking for the GNOME project, nor for its > release team (though I'm CC'ing Vincent Untz so that he is aware of this > discussion), nor for the Epiphany developers. I speak only for myself. I'll try to add some perspective from the GNOME point of view (don't take this as the "official GNOME position" or whatever, though ;-)). A lot of hackers in the GNOME community are quite excited about WebKit and would like to use it -- we already have some GNOME modules using WebKit only, either in a branch or even in trunk. And there are plans to use WebKit here and there (eg, in evolution, to get rid of gtkhtml). So, good stuff. As some of you might know, WebKit/GTK+ was proposed as a dependency for GNOME 2.24 (released last September). It did not make it, mainly because the status of the accessibility support was unclear, but also because epiphany was not ready and we'd like to avoid depending on both gecko and webkit. I guess we'll try to see if this is doable for GNOME 2.26 (due in March, but the decision for webkit will be taken in January, if not before). As far as I can tell, there are two important issues right now around WebKit/GTK+: + many patches waiting for review. Gustavo probably gave a good overview of this issue, and I can't add much on this. + lack of releases. We need regular releases for GNOME, so it's easy for people to get something to test (because it gets packaged, eg). It's also important because we don't want to depend on something which is in svn -- we only depend on actual releases. The lack of releases partly explains the difficulty we had for accessibility testing: the a11y team wanted to test webkit/gtk a11y but many people had troubles to get something to test, since they had to build many things (keep in mind that many people in the a11y team are not coders, so this is not a trivial task for them). The current issues, and the fact that, from the outside, the development seemed stalled for quite some time, makes me worried about GNOME depending on WebKit/GTK+. IMHO, what GNOME would need to adopt WebKit/GTK+ for 2.26 is the following: + an happy epiphany team. This means having epiphany with webkit working well, with no regression (or at least, no major regression). + an happy a11y team. This means that a11y in yelp/devhelp/epiphany/etc. has been tested and the support is considered good enough. I can't stress this item enough: this is a real blocker for GNOME. I'm sure the a11y team will be happy to help if it's easy to test and if the issues they report are acknowledged. + some active development. We don't like to depend on something that is not well-maintained. I'm not saying it's the case, but I wouldn't blindly recommend WebKit/GTK+ right now either ;-) Keep in mind that we'll take a decision in early January, so it'd be nice to have things working as soon as possible. I'm only an outsider to the WebKit project, but I wonder if it would make sense to have less strict rules, or a branch with less strict rules for WebKit/GTK+ -- since WebKit/GTK+ is a bit young and needs some work, it might make sense to be more permissive so that development can occur at a faster pace. I could totally be wrong, though :-) (maybe having more reviewers, as already suggested, is enough) Hope this helps, Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ----- End forwarded message -----
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