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Cobalt – a stripped down Chromium for apps, Linux and embedded systems

cobalt.dev

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Re: Cobalt – a stripped down Chromium for apps, Linux and embedded systems

#23

Post by xcdzvyn »

anaisbetts wrote: post #22

Where did OP discover that this is based on Chromium? I don't actually think that it is - I'm fairly certain it is not based on Chromium (at least the parts that matter), it's a separate, extremely cut-down HTML engine

> The Cobalt Authors forked H5VCC, removed most of the Chromium code -- in particular WebCore and the Chrome Renderer and Compositor -- and built up from scratch an implementation of a simplified subset of HTML, the CSS Box Model for layout, and the Web APIs that were really needed to build a full-screen SPA browse and play application.

So it's based on Chromium, but pretty far from it at this point.

Re: Cobalt – a stripped down Chromium for apps, Linux and embedded systems

#24

Post by znpy »

phh wrote: post #18
piskerpan wrote: post #13

From the footer: > © Google 2019 Not exactly a new or fully supported project, but I do see recent commits on the repo.

It's definitely fully supported, it gets many upgrades and has a pretty long-term and serious roadmap. I strongly recommend not to use it though.

> has a pretty long-term and serious roadmap.

Considering it comes from google, does that mean three months or six months?

Re: Cobalt – a stripped down Chromium for apps, Linux and embedded systems

#25

Post by anaisbetts »

xcdzvyn wrote: post #23
anaisbetts wrote: post #22

Where did OP discover that this is based on Chromium? I don't actually think that it is - I'm fairly certain it is not based on Chromium (at least the parts that matter), it's a separate, extremely cut-down HTML engine

> The Cobalt Authors forked H5VCC, removed most of the Chromium code -- in particular WebCore and the Chrome Renderer and Compositor -- and built up from scratch an implementation of a simplified subset of HTML, the CSS Box Model for layout, and the Web APIs that were really needed to build a full-screen SPA browse and play application. So it's based on Chromium, but pretty far from it at this point.

"Based on Chromium" implies that the core rendering code that comprises Chromium is in this codebase, but this is not at all the case if you browse the source. Basically the only thing that this codebase shares with Chromium is a build system and some very low-level libraries (libbase, which is basically a standard library for C++)

Re: Cobalt – a stripped down Chromium for apps, Linux and embedded systems

#27

Post by syndrig »

mihashco wrote: post #4
umvi wrote: post #2

I was hoping this article would tell me how it is different from Electron. Does anyone know? I'm guessing the main difference is that electron is "full chromium" while cobalt is using a modified smaller chromium.

I don't know electron, but cobalt has some limitations. On page you can find what html5 and css3 tags are supported. List is limited. Cobalt also does not support WebGL. But binary has ~45mb and works really fast compared to other engines on embedded devices. I was not able to run react app on Cobalt, but preact works really well. I've also been doing experiments with the Vue framework and it also works.

Another data point: Flow's[1] executable is ~20MB on Raspberry Pi (under 26MB for a 64bit build; both are smaller than the ICU data bundled with public releases). WebGL, video playback and Javascript JIT are included.

Disclosure: I work at Ekioh.

[1] https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/

Re: Cobalt – a stripped down Chromium for apps, Linux and embedded systems

#28

Post by blooalien »

zackees wrote: post #16
password4321 wrote: post #11

So a browser supporting a subset of HTML maintained by Google employees with an MIT license supporting Linux (especially Raspberry Pi) and Android?

Yes. I worked on this project for three years. This is exactly what it is. It’s also much more stable than chrome.

> "It’s also much more stable than chrome."

I find that exceedingly easy to believe… Chrom(e|ium) as it currently stands (for a rather long while now) is a massive resource hog. Stripping it down and re-writing huge portions of it (pretty much) from scratch can only be an improvement.

Re: Cobalt – a stripped down Chromium for apps, Linux and embedded systems

#29

Post by sandGorgon »

zackees wrote: post #16
password4321 wrote: post #11

So a browser supporting a subset of HTML maintained by Google employees with an MIT license supporting Linux (especially Raspberry Pi) and Android?

Yes. I worked on this project for three years. This is exactly what it is. It’s also much more stable than chrome.

strange question...but if you were to create a new mobile browser for android (with some custom features), would you recommend Chromium or Cobalt ?
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