Mozilla Is Launching A New Web Browser Targeting Developers

[tarceri]

Just to point out a few things:
1. Gecko is written in C++, not C

I'm well aware of that I was being lazy in my description

2. The fact that they are written in two different languages doesn't really matter when it comes to transferring ideas across projects. The REAL reason that such a thing wouldn't work out so well is that Servo is built using a 100% COMPLETELY different architecture from the ground up. It looks pretty much nothing like Gecko/WebKit/Blink/etc right now, and thus any ideas that they would want to incorporate would have to be "translated" so to speak from one architecture to another.

Yes well that was my whole point. Rust was an architectural decision and they are taking advantage of its features. The fact they are written in different languages does matter in regards to my point as its the reason it makes no sense to incorporate things back to Gecko. If it didn't matter they could take what they had learnt as liam was suggesting and rewrite massive parts of Gecko (keeping the name despite the change) to take advantage of what worked well, but that makes no sense because your throwing away your architectural foundation which is Rust (along with all your hard work in Servo for that matter).

3. While Rust does produce memory-safe code by default, Servo uses it's "non-safe code block" feature quite a bit, because it's pretty much required. In their latest TWiS blog post, there's even a mention of a fixed race condition (which aren't allowed in Rust without using unsafe code).

Sure but at least in Rust thats an option rather than a given

[liam]

While you are right its still in research phase its pretty clear that if all goes well it will eventually be used as a replacement.

One of the major reasons for this and the reason you can't just incorporate ideas from servo into gecko is that servo is written in Rust rather than C. There is good reason for using Rust, aside from the potential performace gains that Rust has to offer the other major selling point is security. Rust has built in safety features that c just can't match, and thus a hard to exploit browser becomes easier to achieve when using Rust. With C there are always exploits just waiting to happen, its a game of Whac-A-Mole that takes up a lot of expensive development time.

https://air.mozilla.org/an-introduction-to-servo/video/?embedded=false&autoplay=true

Around the 12min mark, iirc, he explains that due to servo's extreme modularity they are trying to incorporate bits of it back into Firefox (_he mentioned a rust-ified image decoding library... Jpeg, I think).
Also, rust isn't that fast. Certainly not as fast as C can be. What the rust folks have said, mainly Patrick Walton iirc, is that they aim for performance parity with c++ that is attempting to use as much defensive code design as it can to approximate rust safety.
That great type system isn't free, unfortunately.

[Awesomeness]

There was nothing in that post that said they were planning to drop gecko for servo.
OTOH, I provided with a link from someone working on the project who said it is intended for research.
Obviously, believe what you want but you've not provided any evidence for your position while I have for mine.
Now, I am not saying servo won't affect gecko (I explicitly said that I expect they will incorporate ideas from servo into gecko), or that under no circumstances will they move to servo only that they haven't said that is the case.

How can they incorporate Servo things into Gecko when they say that Servo is intended to have a totally different architectural approach? And not only that but also Servo implements WebKit's API, not Gecko's.

[liam]

How can they incorporate Servo things into Gecko when they say that Servo is intended to have a totally different architectural approach? And not only that but also Servo implements WebKit's API, not Gecko's.

First, what does "implements WebKit's API" mean? Second, where did you read this?
Regarding arch, they are looking at modular components to replace, first (they have said that servo is MODELED after webkit's modularity), so all that you need is matching api.
I take it you now agree that they're not looking to replace gecko with servo?

[Daktyl198]

First, what does "implements WebKit's API" mean? Second, where did you read this?
Regarding arch, they are looking at modular components to replace, first (they have said that servo is MODELED after webkit's modularity), so all that you need is matching api.
I take it you now agree that they're not looking to replace gecko with servo?

"Implements WebKit's API" as in WebKit's embedding API, not internal one, and that's not planned for another year or so thus it really doesn't matter. You can find that in their GitHub Wiki.
Second, while Servo is indeed modular, it's not modeled after ANY current layout engine. That's kinda the whole point. It's a brand-new architecture for layout engines.

[liam]

"Implements WebKit's API" as in WebKit's embedding API, not internal one, and that's not planned for another year or so thus it really doesn't matter. You can find that in their GitHub Wiki.
Second, while Servo is indeed modular, it's not modeled after ANY current layout engine. That's kinda the whole point. It's a brand-new architecture for layout engines.

I wasn't aware that they were trying to match APIs with WebKit. That will, hopefully, encourage gnome to move away from WebKit 2, but obviously we'll need to see what kind of performance we can expect.
TBC, I used "modeled" in the loose "took cues from", not carefully examined structure and meticulously recreated every detail.
Pcwalton mentioned this a few years ago when writing about what servo was: "We make heavy use of Git submodules for modularity--like WebKit, we want the pieces of Servo to be independently hackable."

[watchbeans]

Well thats sounds cool, But i wonder what will happen to the other developer tool in firefox?

[Mehak50]

Yeah mozilla has started teasing that one week from now they'll be unleashing a brand new web browser... targeted just for web developers...

[jameswang]

That's a good news. I like Mozilla.

[Mehak50]

That's a good news. I like Mozilla.

Very Good