[sldev] [VWR] More LLMozLib

[Robin Cornelius]

Hi everyone,

I seem to have spent quite a bit of time fighting around with llmozlib
recently but still haven't achieved 100% success. I can get it to
build/link and link to secondlife client on 64bit linux but not
display any web pages including the logon page or web profiles. The
embedded browser code starts up but results in just blank/black pages.
I currently have no idea why. Anyone seen anything like this? In fact
it would be interesting to know what flags and libraries the lindens
use when building mozlib for linux. I think i have all the correct
ones now but wonder if this is why it doesn't quite work.

If anyone is interested the current code the Lindens build with can be
found at http://s3.amazonaws.com/callum-linden/llmozlib_platform_dump.tgz
NOT on the sourcecode download page (VWR-2906).

In doing this i have learn a few things the most interesting is that I
seem to have all of the xulrunner stuff already installed or available
for my distro anyway (Debian). And I can in fact build llmozlib
against my system xulrunner, but with one minor hack because there is
a dependency of the static lib "libprofdirserviceprovider_s.a" which
is part of the internal xulrunner code and not normally exposed. But
this results in a crash when starting the webbroswer, If anyone is
interested i can provide a back trace but i cannot work out what is
going on as i have little experience of the mozilla code. I assume
this is also related to the fact that my installed libxulrunner will
be based on firefox 2.0 release where as llmozlib is still playing
with 1.5.

What is the future of llmozlib? at present it is only used for the
html login page and web profiles tab. So it seems a bit unnecessary
carrying 20Mb+ of binary packages just to do that. The two things i
think I can see with it are the old topic of HTML on a prim and the
web based login that may or may not be able to use the embedded
browser. The answers to these questions might answer have i been
wasting my time completely here? would i be better just sticking to
MOZLIB=no and not trying to get it to work?

What would be a nice solution was if llmozlib could use the proper
exported mozilla API then it would be possible to use the various
distros xulrunner libraries where available and keep supply a fixed
version in the libs package. Care seems to be taken in the mozilla API
to create a frozen API so exact installed library version is not so
important. I know the current llmozlib uses patches in the main
mozilla source as well but i would have thought that it should be
possible to create an embedded browser without patching the mozilla
code by now, at least with newer mozillas anyway?

Robin