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WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering

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Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering

#51

Post by [deleted] »

tjpnz wrote: post #50
pcwalton wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our joke was "the recommended way to build Skia is to become a Google employee, but there are workarounds available if for some reason that isn't practical". There's also the question of "which parts of Skia". If there are five different conceivable ways to implement something in vector graphics, Skia will implement all five, and there will be some sort of hidden obscure configuration setting that Chrome and Android…

In 2024 it would probably be faster to hire a xoogler.

[deleted]

Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering

#52

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

coffeeaddict1 wrote: post #37

Skia is a great library, but as all things Google it's a pain to build. They don't use CMake and building it from source takes 20-30 minutes on a modern laptop. Furthermore, it's constantly changing its APIs and much of it is undocumented and unclear on how to use optimally. Most of the decisions taken by development team aren't discussed in the open and this makes it hard to understand the codebase. I wish there was…

> I wish there was a nice and small vector graphics library with GPU acceleration.

I'm personally skeptical about GPU acceleration being the answer to 2D rendering for various reasons.

I'm looking forward to Blend2D https://blend2d.com/ > which is JIT based maturing and being the preferred solution.

Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering

#54

Post by gigatexal »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #52
coffeeaddict1 wrote: post #37

Skia is a great library, but as all things Google it's a pain to build. They don't use CMake and building it from source takes 20-30 minutes on a modern laptop. Furthermore, it's constantly changing its APIs and much of it is undocumented and unclear on how to use optimally. Most of the decisions taken by development team aren't discussed in the open and this makes it hard to understand the codebase. I wish there was…

> I wish there was a nice and small vector graphics library with GPU acceleration. I'm personally skeptical about GPU acceleration being the answer to 2D rendering for various reasons. I'm looking forward to Blend2D https://blend2d.com/ > which is JIT based maturing and being the preferred solution.

What happened to Cairo the 2d graphics tool?

Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering

#55

Post by wokwokwok »

danpalmer wrote: post #45
coffeeaddict1 wrote: post #37

Skia is a great library, but as all things Google it's a pain to build. They don't use CMake and building it from source takes 20-30 minutes on a modern laptop. Furthermore, it's constantly changing its APIs and much of it is undocumented and unclear on how to use optimally. Most of the decisions taken by development team aren't discussed in the open and this makes it hard to understand the codebase. I wish there was…

Out of interest what's difficult about it to build? In my experience CMake isn't exactly a great developer experience, and many projects of this size take similar times to build. Is the problem specific to Skia or Google open source projects, or is it more based on the (necessary) size of the project?

> In my experience CMake isn't exactly a great developer experience

o_O unlike GN?

Have you used it much?

https://gn.googlesource.com/gn/

Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering

#56

Post by Lutger »

pcwalton wrote: post #47
danpalmer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest what's difficult about it to build? In my experience CMake isn't exactly a great developer experience, and many projects of this size take similar times to build. Is the problem specific to Skia or Google open source projects, or is it more based on the (necessary) size of the project?

The difficult parts change all the time and usually boil down to some sort of undocumented or poorly-documented dependency, especially if you're trying to enable the GPU backends. Every time someone I know tries to get it building it takes them a week to figure out how to do it.

I used to do that when I started out with C/C++...15 years ago. Now my patience is running out after 10 minutes. Tooling has become so much better, but it seems not that much with some C/C++ projects. At least the build times are better, I remember big libs would could take hours to build.

Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering

#58

Post by [deleted] »

wokwokwok wrote: post #55
danpalmer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest what's difficult about it to build? In my experience CMake isn't exactly a great developer experience, and many projects of this size take similar times to build. Is the problem specific to Skia or Google open source projects, or is it more based on the (necessary) size of the project?

> In my experience CMake isn't exactly a great developer experience o_O unlike GN? Have you used it much? https://gn.googlesource.com/gn/

[deleted]

Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering

#59

Post by a1o »

Uhm, I am a bit sad that bringing Cairo up to speed isn't easier, as Cairo is an easier to use dependency than Skia.

I always find building these complex stuff from Google a huge pain - and now they have the additional idea of living on the head and not providing actual releases too...

Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering

#60

Post by charcircuit »

canucker2016 wrote: post #36
zerr wrote: post #29

Didn't Flutter ditch Skia recently due to performance reasons?

Yes, from 2023 Jul 21 blog entry, https://medium.com/@wartelski/impeller-rendering-engine-is-i... : "Impeller is a new Flutter rendering engine that the Flutter team claims solves the early-onset jank problem. It is designed as a replacement for Skia, with the goal of enabling better animations and addressing the jank issue, while also potentially providing support for 3D, which was not previously possible with Skia,…

>Unlike Skia, Impeller compiles shaders during the build process instead of at runtime.

This wouldn't work on most platforms as graphic driver updates can break compatibility with previously compiled shaders.

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