Hi folks,
On Wednesday, August 7, Matt Miller and I (Nick Alexander) met with Jason
Duell and Valentin Gosu to discuss using Necko in non-Gecko contexts.
Sadly I was unable to record the discussion, but I was able to take partial
notes
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/13ZqcDtmedjAykVveOlZSFYP5tWi2i6G5dCzUuHEBY0U/edit#heading=h.9rqnw7pbheyi>
.
The discussion split into two contexts:
1.
Necko in non-GeckoView Android Apps like Notes and Lockbox for Android.
-
Desirable, but there will (almost) always be two network stacks: the
built-in WebView stack and the “other” stack used for FxA, Sync, other
services.
-
Engineering work to “slim down” the equivalent of `libxul.so` to be
feasible to ship is too great to invest in now.
-
Jason suggested a Rust binding to `libcurl` might be a better
approach.
2.
Necko in GeckoView-consuming Android Apps for non-Gecko uses.
-
Desirable to avoid “second network stack” problems that we have in
Firefox for Android: dated cipher suites, inconsistent SNI support, proxy
configuration mismatches.
-
Engineering work to stage XPCOM startup so that Necko is available to
background services (like Sync) without starting the entire
browser is seen
as feasible and is in line with existing efforts to start Gecko headless
before upgrading to headed functionality for, e.g., push
notifications and
service workers.
The immediate next step is for Jason to meet with the GeckoView team to
plan investigations into item 2). For item 1), the relevant non-GeckoView
Android Apps intend to ship as many network stacks as are needed.
Many thanks to Jason and Valentin for their patience and expertise!
Yours,
Nick (for Matt, Jason, and Valentin)
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