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So you want to build a browser engine

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#11

Post by jawerty »

skilled wrote: post #9

Who is this post intended for? Nobody builds their own browser engines. And I mean nobody. I didn’t get the feeling that he wrote this for pet projects either. Andreas over at Ladybird is probably the only one (and Servo?) who is really doing it the way that this post describes. Still, the last couple of paragraphs made me think that this is more of a reflection of his own time over at Mozilla: could have / would hav…

Most people don’t need to write their own OS or compiler. Knowing the details of how things work is apart of getting to gaining expertise

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#12

Post by pvg »

skilled wrote: post #9

Who is this post intended for? Nobody builds their own browser engines. And I mean nobody. I didn’t get the feeling that he wrote this for pet projects either. Andreas over at Ladybird is probably the only one (and Servo?) who is really doing it the way that this post describes. Still, the last couple of paragraphs made me think that this is more of a reflection of his own time over at Mozilla: could have / would hav…

And I mean nobody.

One such project has pretty regular HN chonkthreads, including last week.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#13

Post by giantrobot »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #3

I was going to suggest: > initially try just being a faster, lighter or lower-power Electron or WebView. But he mentioned it himself, though maybe someone might want to try this with no intention to become a full browser. Can you skip any of the tricky security requirements if it'll be bundled into an app? Or is that just asking for trouble?

> Or is that just asking for trouble?

The average Node project pulls in hundreds of dependencies. While you'd hope these would have some security vetting because of the Many Eyes theory, you have no fucking idea what your project is doing. Even a trivial Electron app is running a ridiculous amount of unreviewed third party code.

Just one module able to exercise some local exploit in your engine because you didn't fix Security Footgun #8176 screws over all of your users.

A browser engine that's been developed with a billion dollars of person hours runs that same untrusted third party code but has security guardrails everywhere.

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#14

Post by jsheard »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #8
amelius wrote: post #6

This makes writing a compiler or writing an OS kernel look like child's play.

A browser engine is a compiler. Or, more properly, it's at least two compilers (HTML + CSS -- you can outsource JS to V8 or whatever).

The DOM stuff, JS, WASM, WebGL, WebGPU... at least five compilers, with JS and WASM needing two distinct frontends (baseline/optimizing) and at least two backends (x86/ARM), and WebGL and WebGPU needing three backends each (D3D/VK/Metal).

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#15

Post by skilled »

pvg wrote: post #12
skilled wrote: post #9

Who is this post intended for? Nobody builds their own browser engines. And I mean nobody. I didn’t get the feeling that he wrote this for pet projects either. Andreas over at Ladybird is probably the only one (and Servo?) who is really doing it the way that this post describes. Still, the last couple of paragraphs made me think that this is more of a reflection of his own time over at Mozilla: could have / would hav…

And I mean nobody. One such project has pretty regular HN chonkthreads, including last week. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Yeah that is what I meant. To my knowledge, Andreas is the only person crazy enough to do it and also do it in the open.

You have to watch some of his YouTube videos to appreciate the insanity that goes into getting things to work, but he at least has some help from the OSS community: building automated tests, scripts, etc.

As I was reading the post I thought he would at least shout him out too!

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#16

Post by cxr »

jraph wrote: post #5
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #3

I was going to suggest: > initially try just being a faster, lighter or lower-power Electron or WebView. But he mentioned it himself, though maybe someone might want to try this with no intention to become a full browser. Can you skip any of the tricky security requirements if it'll be bundled into an app? Or is that just asking for trouble?

> Or is that just asking for trouble? With the interactions an electron-like app might be doing with external services and the ton of JS third party library it could use, I think it would be indeed risky.

None of the security mitigations described in the post (nor any of those implemented in any browser engine) are aimed at protecting developers against themselves when they run an agglomeration of third-party modules as a single bundle under the same policy.

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#17

Post by cjpearson »

skilled wrote: post #9

Who is this post intended for? Nobody builds their own browser engines. And I mean nobody. I didn’t get the feeling that he wrote this for pet projects either. Andreas over at Ladybird is probably the only one (and Servo?) who is really doing it the way that this post describes. Still, the last couple of paragraphs made me think that this is more of a reflection of his own time over at Mozilla: could have / would hav…

Flow is another example I've seen.

https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#18

Post by pvg »

skilled wrote: post #15
pvg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I mean nobody. One such project has pretty regular HN chonkthreads, including last week. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Yeah that is what I meant. To my knowledge, Andreas is the only person crazy enough to do it and also do it in the open. You have to watch some of his YouTube videos to appreciate the insanity that goes into getting things to work, but he at least has some help from the OSS community: building automated tests, scripts, etc. As I was reading the post I thought he would at least shout him out too!

Ah that's 'statistically nobody' vs 'nobody'.

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#19

Post by ramon156 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #3

I was going to suggest: > initially try just being a faster, lighter or lower-power Electron or WebView. But he mentioned it himself, though maybe someone might want to try this with no intention to become a full browser. Can you skip any of the tricky security requirements if it'll be bundled into an app? Or is that just asking for trouble?

Tauri basically?

Re: So you want to build a browser engine

#20

Post by ramon156 »

skilled wrote: post #9

Who is this post intended for? Nobody builds their own browser engines. And I mean nobody. I didn’t get the feeling that he wrote this for pet projects either. Andreas over at Ladybird is probably the only one (and Servo?) who is really doing it the way that this post describes. Still, the last couple of paragraphs made me think that this is more of a reflection of his own time over at Mozilla: could have / would hav…

There's a reason they sometimes on interviews ask "what happens when I fill in a url and hit enter", because almost no one knows. It's good to know how your daily tools work.
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