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Are there really around 600 people all working on Firefox? If so, why in bloody hell has it taken them so long to make it multi-process? There wasn't even a 64

by stryk 10y ago

Are there really around 600 people all working on Firefox? If so, why in bloody hell has it taken them so long to make it multi-process? There wasn't even a 64 bit [Windows] version until relatively recently... what the fuck are they doing?

FreeFull 10y ago
Note that this is with over 13 million lines of code, that in the long past used to be the Netscape browser. I can't imagine adding multiprocess support to such a codebase being very easy, even with significant modernisation of the code.
azakai 10y ago
Building a modern browser takes a large team. For example, there is a team on each of the following: * Layout (HTML, CSS) * JavaScript * Graphics: HTML, 2D canvas, 3D WebGL * Platform integration (windows, os x, gtk, etc.) * Audio * New web APIs * Security * QA * Release engineering * Testing * Optimization / low-level tooling * And others I can't think of right now. All major browsers have teams of hundreds of people or more. The other browsers than Firefox probably have larger ones, in fact, since their budgets are much larger (for example, just Chrome's ad budget was larger than Firefox's entire budget for everything). As for why multi-process took a while, it was working several years ago already and shipped in mobile firefox, but the hard part for desktop specifically was addons. That took several years, since it's both a technical issue and an ecosystem issue.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  I wonder if we should stop calling them browsers and start calling them webVMs.
sanderjd 10y ago
It's open source, so maybe go take a look and see what they're doing? Modern web browsers are incredibly complicated pieces of software.
jldugger 10y ago
There's over 1000 employees working at Mozilla Corp. Bear in mind that, beyond the basic backoffice services of running a company, they have the following on their plate: - Firefox - Rust - Servo - Addons - Online help & support documentation - Soccorro crash reporter - FirefoxOS - Aframe.io VR framework for WebGL - WebGL - Thunderbird - Bugzilla - BrowserID/Persona - Sync Multiprocess is enabled in Developer editions, so it's definitely coming. edit: thousand, not thousandk =(
mintplant 10y ago
e10s (multiprocess) is currently rolling out. It's probably the biggest single architectural change in the browser's history and requires coordination with huge numbers of extension authors. Lots of people have put a lot of work into this project; it's not like you can just flick a magic multiprocess switch on a giant application like Firefox. http://www.arewee10syet.com/ http://www.arewee10syet.com/ https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule_and_Status https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule_and_Status https://asadotzler.com/2016/06/06/firefox-48-beta-release-and-e10s/ https://asadotzler.com/2016/06/06/firefox-48-beta-release-an...
- digi_owl 10y ago
  I really wish they would have made parallel releases of GTK2 and GTK3 versions for Linux. I am basically stuck on ESR as getting GTK3 going is not an option, and ESR is unlikely to see e10s.

by stryk 10y ago

FreeFull 10y ago

Note that this is with over 13 million lines of code, that in the long past used to be the Netscape browser. I can't imagine adding multiprocess support to such a codebase being very easy, even with significant modernisation of the code.

azakai 10y ago

Building a modern browser takes a large team. For example, there is a team on each of the following: * Layout (HTML, CSS) * JavaScript * Graphics: HTML, 2D canvas, 3D WebGL * Platform integration (windows, os x, gtk, etc.) * Audio * New web APIs * Security * QA * Release engineering * Testing * Optimization / low-level tooling * And others I can't think of right now. All major browsers have teams of hundreds of people or more. The other browsers than Firefox probably have larger ones, in fact, since their budgets are much larger (for example, just Chrome's ad budget was larger than Firefox's entire budget for everything). As for why multi-process took a while, it was working several years ago already and shipped in mobile firefox, but the hard part for desktop specifically was addons. That took several years, since it's both a technical issue and an ecosystem issue.

digi_owl 10y ago
I wonder if we should stop calling them browsers and start calling them webVMs.

sanderjd 10y ago

It's open source, so maybe go take a look and see what they're doing? Modern web browsers are incredibly complicated pieces of software.

jldugger 10y ago

There's over 1000 employees working at Mozilla Corp. Bear in mind that, beyond the basic backoffice services of running a company, they have the following on their plate: - Firefox - Rust - Servo - Addons - Online help & support documentation - Soccorro crash reporter - FirefoxOS - Aframe.io VR framework for WebGL - WebGL - Thunderbird - Bugzilla - BrowserID/Persona - Sync Multiprocess is enabled in Developer editions, so it's definitely coming. edit: thousand, not thousandk =(

mintplant 10y ago

e10s (multiprocess) is currently rolling out. It's probably the biggest single architectural change in the browser's history and requires coordination with huge numbers of extension authors. Lots of people have put a lot of work into this project; it's not like you can just flick a magic multiprocess switch on a giant application like Firefox. http://www.arewee10syet.com/ http://www.arewee10syet.com/ https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule_and_Status https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule_and_Status https://asadotzler.com/2016/06/06/firefox-48-beta-release-and-e10s/ https://asadotzler.com/2016/06/06/firefox-48-beta-release-an...

digi_owl 10y ago
I really wish they would have made parallel releases of GTK2 and GTK3 versions for Linux. I am basically stuck on ESR as getting GTK3 going is not an option, and ESR is unlikely to see e10s.