Chrome Is The New C Runtime • Hacker News Board

Re: Chrome Is The New C Runtime

#51

Post by icefox » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 12:51 AM UTC

sanjeevrad wrote: post #43

ii wrote: post #36

Chromium, Gecko and Webkit codebases are huge, they are hard to compile. They are optimised for use in the browsers and nothing else. They are not universal runtimes yet! I like that idea but please don't make it sound like chromium runtime is ready for everybody to use for their projects.

I'm not sure what you mean by "optimized for use in browsers". I can't speak to the other 2, but Chromium is basically a vast collection of C++ cross-platform libraries that can be used in many applications.

While a class/library/etc might be used by chrome and all of its many users, it was originally designed to solve an issue for the browser and it might have a horrible api for anything else or much more likely be completely missing api that other applications would not only want, but need.

Re: Chrome Is The New C Runtime

#52

Post by nilsbunger » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 12:53 AM UTC

mbrubeck wrote: post #44

As an example of this type of Chromium library re-use, Firefox and Firefox OS use the Chromium ipc library for messaging between the main UI process, plugin processes, and content processes (in Firefox OS or in Firefox with the experimental multi-process mode enabled). https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/ipc/chromium https://wiki.mozilla.org/IPC_Protocols

Yes, we (OP) use the ipc library too. It's a great asynchronous IPC mechanism which works across platforms.

Re: Chrome Is The New C Runtime

#53

Post by icefox » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 12:55 AM UTC

sanjeevr wrote: post #12

Hi all, I'm the author of the post. Happy to answer detailed questions on using Chromium as a Dev platform. Any suggestions for a follow-up post?

Do you have a link to the documentation? And if there is no documentation for this many year old project why is that? Is using it in this manor different than the explicit goals of that code (which from what I understand is to only support chrome)

Re: Chrome Is The New C Runtime

#54

Post by icefox » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 12:58 AM UTC

sanjeevr wrote: post #12

Hi all, I'm the author of the post. Happy to answer detailed questions on using Chromium as a Dev platform. Any suggestions for a follow-up post?

"Web apps are a good solution some of the time (except for that little detail called IE!)."

This statement makes very little sense. You say that you can't use web apps because you would require client have a specific app (chrome) on their machine, but then you say the solution is that they must have a different specific app on their machine. I would re-write that or remove it.

Re: Chrome Is The New C Runtime

#55

Post by codingtheone » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 1:04 AM UTC

So you write your mobile apps in C++? and you can't take advantage of iOS or Android STL?

Re: Chrome Is The New C Runtime

#56

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 1:12 AM UTC

michaelwww wrote: post #49

sanjeevr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't relying on Dart. (P)Nacl is a very interesting option which I'm willing to bet will remain with the platform.

Now that you're not a Google employee, can you give an opinion on Dart's chances of making it into Chrome. Thanks.

[deleted]

Re: Chrome Is The New C Runtime

#57

Post by nilsbunger » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 1:12 AM UTC

icefox wrote: post #50

sanjeevrad wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would only link with the net library (and its dependent libraries - like base and crypto)

And what about source and binary compatibility. What are the current guaranties? (his second question) Edit: to be clear after you get your app up and running with the current version how much time has to be spent on ongoing maintenance down the road?

You build the libraries and link them into your libraries. If you maintain a cadence of updating your Chrome checkout every month, you will mostly be OK (though this can vary, of course).

Re: Chrome Is The New C Runtime

#58

Post by mbrubeck » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 1:22 AM UTC

brokenparser wrote: post #3

XULRunner is almost 8 years old now, it was invented for the same purpose TFA uses Chromium but it's actually documented: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/XU...

These are at very different levels. For example, XULRunner itself is partly built on top of (a small portion of) Chromium library code, as noted elsewhere in this discussion.

Re: Chrome Is The New C Runtime

#59

Post by lstamour » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 1:24 AM UTC

While looking for cross-platform (iOS and Android) networking and security resources, Google kept giving me references to the Chrome codebase. Having compiled Chromium for a homebrew Chrome book (and tired of copying settings between two separate codebases), I'm going to try this. :)

A big shout out to the author of this stack overflow post, where I first confirmed that it might indeed make sense to develop function-based middleware in C or C++ and share it between iOS and Android to bridge the low and high levels of your app: http://stackoverflow.com/revisions/5234868/2

Re: Chrome Is The New C Runtime

#60

Post by quotemstr » Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 1:27 AM UTC

brokenparser wrote: post #3

XULRunner is almost 8 years old now, it was invented for the same purpose TFA uses Chromium but it's actually documented: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/XU...

Correct. Chrome is breaking no new group here. XULRunner aside, you can also use Mozilla's NSPR library for cross-platform basic services and NSS for TLS.