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Servo Nightly Builds Available

blog.servo.org

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Re: Servo Nightly Builds Available

#211

Post by outworlder »

mkishi wrote: post #209
pcwalton wrote: post #2

Happy to answer questions (when I wake up; getting this ready has been a lot of work, needless to say) :) It goes without saying, but as this is the very first nightly (not by any means a full-fledged release), expect severe bugs, crashes, and missing functionality. Many of your favorite sites will be broken. Don't expect to use this as your everyday browser. We'd love feedback on what issues folks hit the most, so w…

Awesome work! I noticed that the Servo Nightly build is already about as big as Chrome or Firefox. As it's not yet a complete browser, I expected it to have a lighter executable. Do you know what lead to this? Is it a matter of build artifacts or optimization? Is Servo going to grow even larger while achieving feature-parity with other engines? It looks like Servo could be a great alternative for Chromium Content --…

> I noticed that the Servo Nightly build is already about as big as Chrome or Firefox.

Probably not apples to apples. I don't believe optimizing for executable size to be too high in their priority list.

Re: Servo Nightly Builds Available

#213

Post by lisivka »

watty wrote: post #208
lisivka wrote: post #130

Does not work on Fedora 23 due to mismatched libraries: servo requires openssl 1.0.0, while Fedora 23 has 1.0.2h.

I like how a few comments up you're saying how harmful Windows is and implying how easy it is to run Linux and Servo and here you are complaining about mismatched libraries.

It because Servo authors chose to not distribute libraries with Servo, and their chosen version is not same as mine. It's known as "DLL hell", because it frequently happens on Windows with DLL libraries.

Re: Servo Nightly Builds Available

#214

Post by lisivka »

MichaelGG wrote: post #206
lisivka wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sorry to inform you, but Windows is considered harmful, so this is good etiquette now, also known as "word of mouth". You can download and run Linux in fraction of time you will need to argue that this is bad for a user. Download Linux. Download Servo. Run Linux. Run Servo. Profit.

Yeah I wish Linux desktop was that great. I run Xubuntu for dev work (Rust actually). Even really trivial things, like making the edges of the windows easy to grab to resize -- they get totally wrong: the target area is 1px or so. (Yes I know, Alt+Right click is an option, and I should really just use XMonad.) I go search for this issue. Sure enough, many years ago people were talking about this issue, and it's just…

So why you need alpha version of Servo if IE will provide smoother experience for you anyway?

Re: Servo Nightly Builds Available

#215

Post by pilif »

coldtea wrote: post #161
ybx wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like it's based on Trident to me

Sounds like it's so rewritten compared to Trident, it's not even alike anymore.

The last few IE exploits also affected Edge. I would say that there is still quite a few IE pieces left in Edge

Re: Servo Nightly Builds Available

#216

Post by nickpsecurity »

kbenson wrote: post #195
nickpsecurity wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's why I'm focusing on behavioral aspect: what does the software do ? A browser fork that behaves very differently from prior one to point you have to change existing code to get same effect is essentially a new app at behavioral level. However, it might have same name and lots of same code inside. At that level, it's old code in an old app. We largely define our components by their interfaces and behavior. So that…

Sure, but if it behaves significantly differently, then I think that precludes it from being a function by function rewrite. At the same time, a component by component rewrite can be a complete rewrite (but it depends a bit more on the details, I think). If the mainly user visible portions are rewritten, but much of the utility code and other components are not, it may appear behaviorally different, but but be largel…

Re rewrite differences

Let's look at the grep example agsin. If it did same thing, but new interface, then it would be same thing because behavior is otherwise the same. Now, lets say you changed what pattern-matching itself produced where you no longer got the same results from same text. Matched totally different patterns unless you changed the text you are inputting to get same results again. And the interface was different. Is that still grep?

If he's talking one component, maybe not anything new underneath. He said the engine (rendering) would be more standards compliant and compatible with other browsers. That's basically what Opera and Mozilla did many years ago while IE didnt. If you blocked out the name, nobody using the browser would think they were using same app when they saw rendering hit those aspects totally distorting the presentation. Or had to redo their websites to display correctly. I remember reading many complaints from web developers about making stuff work with several, different engines whose rendering argued.

So, if Edge engine is different enough to cause that, then it seems like a different engine at behavioral level given same input leads to different output that fails acceptance. Nobody would think it was same app unless the UI told them.

I mean, I still think sameness or newness is an open issue. Do we judge it be function and component as you added? Or interface and behavioral spec as I was looking at? One might also look at data formats. I think it will best to technically just compare in various ways to be accurate. Feature-driven development field probably has some insight into this. However, users will look at them as different, at least in a version since, if they can't do what they were used for or break compatibility. The two Python versions are possibly a good example.

Re: Servo Nightly Builds Available

#217

Post by lisivka »

watty wrote: post #208
lisivka wrote: post #130

Does not work on Fedora 23 due to mismatched libraries: servo requires openssl 1.0.0, while Fedora 23 has 1.0.2h.

I like how a few comments up you're saying how harmful Windows is and implying how easy it is to run Linux and Servo and here you are complaining about mismatched libraries.

It's looks like you are misunderstood me. Linux is great for development. It's free. It's made by developers and for developers. It has lot of development tools integrated into OS. You can tweak, modify, and debug just anything, including kernel. It well documented and has full sources. If you want to help Servo developers, Linux is great choice. If you want to USE Servo, then you need to wait until developers will release version for your platform, because it is not ready for end users. It is sad that I need to explain that on Hacker News site.

Re: Servo Nightly Builds Available

#218

Post by nickpsecurity »

gsnedders wrote: post #204
Manishearth wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So most of the spec bugs I've come across don't have to do with English vagaries; they have to do with the reverse-engineering not being perfect. Converting the nebulous concept of expected behavior into procedural text is hard, and there are bugs. So yeah, "implementation deviations" is usually the issue, but not really English ambiguity, at least with web specs. I put my pedant hat on when looking at proposed chang…

There have certainly been spec bugs that could be found from a formal specification, some of which are security related (most of the TLS bugs found by miTLS have been protocol bugs simply found as a result of encoding much of the semantics formally). That said, while I certainly have a fondness for formal specifications, I also always end up feeling like they have a lot of downsides. They're often very verbose and ha…

Re specs downsides

The wisdom from old days was to use relatively, simple, formal languages that were easy to train people on and use. B, Z, and TLA had good results plus lasted over time. The other thing was to do English spec, formal spec, and code side-by-side with each team looking for inconsistencies. The developers usually picked up the basics of the technique rather quickly but at least one specialist was always necessary to make first use go smoothly.

So, that's still my recommendation. A subset of those, especially focusing on states and contracts, done in same fashion against English specs and clear code should take lower work than going all Isabelle, NuPRL, or PVS on a problem. Second application is also always easier. Reuse where possible helps as with code.

So, some difficulties and training but probably easier than some frameworks, etc IT people learn today.

Re: Servo Nightly Builds Available

#219

Post by lisivka »

lisivka wrote: post #128
po1nter wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an ETA for when the Windows version might be available for us to try?

Why not to try Linux? It's free. It's made by developers and for developers. Try Fedora Linux.

If a hacker will write something about hacking on Hacker News, he will receive lot of downvotes. True story.

Re: Servo Nightly Builds Available

#220

Post by nickpsecurity »

RubyPinch wrote: post #136
pilif wrote: post #81

It's amazing to see actual effort taking place to build a new browser engine from scratch. I would say that since the late 90ies, there hasn't been a single new engine being made. Everything we have now is a development based on KHTML, Gecko, Presto or Trident. By now, HTML and the standards surrounding it have become so big that starting from a blank slate nowadays is next to impossible. The existing engines have it…

There are some smaller groups that are working on their own engines (slowly but surely) https://gngr.info/ comes to mind

If interested in Java browsers, then you might like to check out one that had quite a bit of development.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/xamj/

The main site is down due to dain issues. Googling will also give you a blog and Github. Their Cobra engine was Java IIRC. All that code might make a nice head start even if this project is dead or goes that way.

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