Package: wnpp Severity: wishlist Owner: Andreas Røsdal <[email protected]> X-Debbugs-Cc: [email protected]
* Package name : northstar Version : 1.0.4 Upstream Author : Andreas Røsdal <[email protected]> * URL : https://github.com/nordstjernen-web/northstar-browser * License : GPL-3+ Programming Lang: C Description : minimalist GTK 4 web browser with an original engine Northstar is a web browser written from scratch in C, with a GTK 4 user interface and a libcurl network stack. Its HTML, CSS, and JavaScript engine is an original implementation -- it is not based on Gecko, WebKit, or Blink. Pages render in a sandboxed renderer process (seccomp + Landlock on Linux); the browser supports HTML5, modern CSS, modern JavaScript (via quickjs-ng). The engine is deliberately small and intended to be readable and maintainable end to end by a single person. Website: https://nordstjernen.org/ I believe it is useful for Debian because it adds genuine browser engine diversity: essentially every graphical browser in the archive today is a Gecko, Blink, or WebKit derivative. Northstar is a fully independent GPL-3+ implementation with a small footprint (a single ~8 MB binary linking only against libraries already in Debian). The upstream build vendors two meson subprojects: lexbor (HTML/URL parsing) and quickjs-ng (JavaScript). Debian's lexbor is at the exact version Northstar pins (3.0.0) and I plan to support building against the system library upstream; Debian's quickjs-ng source package currently ships no shared library or -dev package, so that copy stays embedded for now, statically linked. Both are documented in debian/copyright and debian/README.source. The remaining vendored single-file components (wuffs, pl_mpeg, minimp3, WAMR) are not packaged in Debian. The source code is programmed by Claude and ChatGPT Codex, and tested and architected by me. I am the upstream author, and the packaging is prepared and lintian-clean (builds verified in sid and forky chroots). I intend to maintain the package long-term and will be looking for a sponsor; an RFS will follow once this ITP has a bug number. Regards, Andreas Røsdal
