4 ms·

"headless" Poke me when there are no X11/Qt/GTK/whatever dependencies at all - that is headless. https://packages.debian.org/stretch/firefox-esr https://packa

by pmlnr 9y ago

"headless" Poke me when there are no X11/Qt/GTK/whatever dependencies at all - that is headless. https://packages.debian.org/stretch/firefox-esr https://packages.debian.org/stretch/firefox-esr

swiley 9y ago
This got down voted a lot but GTK is really a pretty painful dependency in many situations (especially gtk3) Not that Firefox itself is particularly lightweight.
- megous 9y ago
  Why?
- noselasd 9y ago
  Well - you will get downvotes for making a technical claim, but not explaining the reason...
baldfat 9y ago
If your running this on a server sure great. On desktop that is next to pointless due to the need for those dependencies for everything besides cure apps.
- ryanlol 9y ago
  >If your running this on a server sure great. Which is certainly the obvious primary use case for headless browsers.
  - baldfat 9y ago
    I actually have to run it on my desktop due to non-primary use cases.
jmull 9y ago
I think the goal is to have a browser that renders web pages and is fully interactive, but just doesn't render to screen and is interactive through an API rather than input devices. So it's going to need a UI rendering and interaction library.
jxn 9y ago
Upvote the bug! https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1372998 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1372998 I doubt it'll happen anytime too soon, but Mozilla should see the community interest.
- TheRealPomax 9y ago
  As minor counterpoint: Firefox is not strictly speaking developed "by Mozilla" but by the community. Mozilla's the curator, and has a fair bit of staff also working on it, but vast swathes of the codebase are community contributions. If you need FF to do a thing, and you think you have good enough ideas to contribute the solution there, then rather than upvoting a bug, or bumping it to ask what's happening, be the person to make the happening happen =)
  - jxn 9y ago
    Of course, but bug upvotes don't hurt that cause, either. I have a few reasons that I work on open source projects. First, to fix a bug or add a feature that affects me directly. Second, to learn something new. If I'm just doing the latter, I'd prefer to tackle a bug with more interest/votes, to help others out while I'm at it and increase the odds of finding a willing reviewer.
mintplant 9y ago
You don't actually need to have X11 etc running to use headless mode, the libraries are just necessary for linking as there aren't separate headless and non-headless Firefox binaries shipped. The possibility of dynamically loading these libraries to remove this dependency is being looked into.

by pmlnr 9y ago

"headless" Poke me when there are no X11/Qt/GTK/whatever dependencies at all - that is headless. https://packages.debian.org/stretch/firefox-esr https://packages.debian.org/stretch/firefox-esr

swiley 9y ago

This got down voted a lot but GTK is really a pretty painful dependency in many situations (especially gtk3) Not that Firefox itself is particularly lightweight.

megous 9y ago
Why?
noselasd 9y ago
Well - you will get downvotes for making a technical claim, but not explaining the reason...

baldfat 9y ago

If your running this on a server sure great. On desktop that is next to pointless due to the need for those dependencies for everything besides cure apps.

ryanlol 9y ago
>If your running this on a server sure great. Which is certainly the obvious primary use case for headless browsers.
- baldfat 9y ago
  I actually have to run it on my desktop due to non-primary use cases.

jmull 9y ago

I think the goal is to have a browser that renders web pages and is fully interactive, but just doesn't render to screen and is interactive through an API rather than input devices. So it's going to need a UI rendering and interaction library.

jxn 9y ago

Upvote the bug! https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1372998 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1372998 I doubt it'll happen anytime too soon, but Mozilla should see the community interest.

TheRealPomax 9y ago
As minor counterpoint: Firefox is not strictly speaking developed "by Mozilla" but by the community. Mozilla's the curator, and has a fair bit of staff also working on it, but vast swathes of the codebase are community contributions. If you need FF to do a thing, and you think you have good enough ideas to contribute the solution there, then rather than upvoting a bug, or bumping it to ask what's happening, be the person to make the happening happen =)
- jxn 9y ago
  Of course, but bug upvotes don't hurt that cause, either. I have a few reasons that I work on open source projects. First, to fix a bug or add a feature that affects me directly. Second, to learn something new. If I'm just doing the latter, I'd prefer to tackle a bug with more interest/votes, to help others out while I'm at it and increase the odds of finding a willing reviewer.

mintplant 9y ago

You don't actually need to have X11 etc running to use headless mode, the libraries are just necessary for linking as there aren't separate headless and non-headless Firefox binaries shipped. The possibility of dynamically loading these libraries to remove this dependency is being looked into.