Blink, Chromiums rendering engine, based on WebKit, already uses skia right? Why not just import all that code?
Blink split from WebKit a decade ago, I doubt they still have enough in common for it to be worth merging features.
WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering
41–50 of 181 posts
Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering
#42So will they maintain a stable C API to skia? It is long-time known pain point that the skia official doesn't provide a usable C API.
One way to keep a stable API is to pin the version used...
And let's be honest, the external API doesn't change awfully fast anyway. A totally dead project would fall behind, but even a tiny amount of work would be able to keep up.
Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering
#43Skia 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…
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Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would they? The API they (WebKit) are providing is the Canvas API, the fact that they're using Skia behind the scenes is an implementation detail... I don't see why they would go through the trouble of maintaining a stable C API for internal use in a C++ project?
Maybe so they could use newer versions of skia
This assumes that maintaining a stable C interface to Skia, and then writing the WebKit rendering code against that C interface, is easier than maintaining WebKit rendering code which calls Skia's C++ interface directly. I'm not convinced that that's the case.
At the very least, the stable interface should probably be C++, mapping between C and C++ is often non-trivial...
Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering
#45Skia 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?
Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering
#46Skia 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…
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 will use to determine which one actually gets used. It's a very unfriendly piece of software to use, honestly.
Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering
#47Skia 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?
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.
Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering
#48I was curious how Igalia was funded and this was a surprisingly good interview on how they’re structured, how they work with the major browser companies, etc… Apparently many Apple, Google, Firefox engineers left to work for them. https://thenewstack.io/igalia-the-open-source-powerhouse-you...
Thanks for the article, I never heard of them.
Since they are apparently "powerful" enough to decide major direction of WebKit development as evidenced by OP's article, what exactly is their relationship with Apple in this regard? Like who has the final say and who do the day-to-day decisions?
I'm always curious about the politics and power structure/dynamics of these major open source projects, especially the ones backed up by large companies.
Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering
#49So will they maintain a stable C API to skia? It is long-time known pain point that the skia official doesn't provide a usable C API.
I think only Microsoft maintains a stable C API for their SkiaSharp. Skia only cares about google projects. I don't even know why they bother to opensource it.
Re: WebKit switching to Skia for 2d graphics rendering
#50Skia 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…
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.