[sldev] [VWR] llmozlib and xulrunner

[Robin Cornelius]

Hmm this seems to be a pet topic of mine again :-(

Right i've been beating llmozlib2 with a stick and can get it to build
against system xulrunner but its an absolute no show to run. Looking
at the changes its not really surprising as entire new interfaces have
been bolted on to mozilla in order to get it to work correctly in an
embedded environment. I have un done a couple of these but this just
results in nasty crashes when starting mozilla. Its also starting to
become difficult to do this at all, may be i can fix it this time, may
be not?

So for packaging the client for Linux we either have to disable
llmozlib or ship a full mozilla build. Getting a full mozilla build
included in Debian or Fedora (Seg can you comment?) just for the sake
of an embedded browser is a big no no and I cannot see it happening.

Disabling llmozlib is an option, but even thats kind of a pain and
with things like the whole 1.18.6.X branch it was pretty much a show
stopper doing such things. With the in world search and all the new
media things that 1.19.1 brings us not having the embedded browser is
a bit of a disabling factor.

So some questions:-

With all these changes to mozilla, are any of these being submitted to
the mozilla project to improve the browser in embedded environments?
so may be one day mozilla xulrunner will do the things we require of
it?

Is the mozilla's embedding API absolutely not up to what is required
of it? So there is no alternative but to patch the mozilla code? I
remember there are issues with native controls being displayed
incorrectly and it seems that a whole bunch of embedding call backs
need to be added to mozilla to do some basic things? So is mozilla
just broken, or are we trying to do something with it it was never
designed to do?

Something i really don't understand so please correct me here, is how
can a firefox 3 be built on (an unmodifed) xulrunner core but loads of
patches and hooks are needed here do what seems lilke standard tasks?

Webkit keeps being mentioned as an alternative. Is there any real
interest in this at all? Any one know if it is capable of achieving
the same *without* being patched?

As i am not sure of the grand plans for embedded web pages, does
webkit support plugins as well as mozilla. Especially on linux where
we are often a 3rd rate citizen. The importance of this is determined
by the plans for embedded web pages, which i don't know.

Robin