7 ms·

Chrome Dev Hits Version 7; Native Client Part of Release

48 points by dcawrey 16y ago

wccrawford 16y ago
“–enable-nacl” ... Enable Salt? What? Ohhh... "Native Client"
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Chrome also uses the pepper plugin API.
terrellm 16y ago
Geesh they are already on version 7 and Chrome? Maybe someone at Google forgot to include the "1." in front of the version. It's interesting that Internet Explorer, which came out in 1995, is on version 9 while Chrome which came out just two years ago is already on version 7. - Edits below to address the downvotes: Maybe I didn't communicate my point clearly. I certainly didn't intend to knock Chrome - I use it along with Safari as my primary browsers. My point was more to say "come on guys, 7 versions in 2 years while everyone else (FF, IE, Safari, Opera) has had one or two?". Maybe I'm biased because I worked at a software company years ago who wanted to communicate their product was as mature as the competition's and skipped straight from version 1.0 to version 4.0. An no, I'm not implying Chrome is less mature than others.
- Charuru 16y ago
  Doesn't really matter. The version numbers are for internal use and for tech blogs, the consumer is never exposed to it because of the auto update.
  - colonelxc 16y ago
    It's an interesting behavior though, not just Chrome, but everyone. Certain numbers have meanings (1.0 being the most famous), just like extra tags like "alpha" and "beta". They're a signal to IT folk to measure progress, and at least the perceived value of an upgrade (1.0 to 1.1 is a small change compared to 1.0 to 2.0). There's also expectations of compatibility. Files made with 1.0 should work with 1.1, but 2.0 might have breaking features that need to be looked into deeper. Of course this varies with every single piece of software. You're right that for Chrome, it doesn't matter nearly as much, because updates are automatic. I just find it very interesting to see some software shoot up quick (maybe a 1.0 after 6 months), and then other software takes a lot longer (vlc taking years and years to hit 1.0).
    - richbradshaw 16y ago
      Wine springs to mind here.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  This isn't unheard of - emacs is at version 22, but it is really only because they grew tired of adding 1. in front. Software versioning never made much sense in the first place.
  - weaksauce 16y ago
    Well in the case of commercial software it made a lot of money by changing the UI a bit, adding a few bullet points to the comparison matrix and incrementing the version by one.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Why do you imagine that versioning should be used for anything other than milestones the development team believe are important enough to warrant bumping the major version number? Also, do you imagine that Chrome 7 is not as advanced and has not seen as much improvement as IE 7? If you look at the advancements made with each Chrome revision, they are as significant as, if not sometimes more than, the differences between major versions of Firefox or IE.
  - Elepsis 16y ago
    Are you kidding? Try comparing IE3 to IE7, and Chrome 3 to Chrome 7...
- js2 16y ago
  This is just how Chromium does versioning. Chromium version #'s are four parts: major.minor.build.patch. Of these four parts, major.minor are "marketing" controlled. The other two parts, build.patch are engineering controlled and related to the Chromium branching strategy. Chromium develops everything on trunk. Typically, once a day, they increment the build #. The build #'s are part of their branching process. Once a branch is cut, its build # is fixed. Instead, only the patch # is incremented on that branch, again about once a day. So for example, the current stable release is milestone 5. This was built from the 375 branch. So the full version # is 5.0.375.127, which indicates that about 127 days have passed since the 375 branch was cut as you can see here: http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome?view=rev&revision=44206 http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome?view=rev&revision=... Chromium hasn't made much use of the minor part of the version #, the notable exception being 4.1. Also, historically, Chromium has aimed to release a new major version every 6 months. But they announced recently that they plan to move to an even shorter release schedule: http://blog.chromium.org/2010/07/release-early-release-often.html http://blog.chromium.org/2010/07/release-early-release-often... So if you think it's got high versions now, just wait. I notice that even though milestone 6 is only in the beta channel, the dev channel already has milestone 7 loaded in it: http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/ http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/ tl;dr: Chrome versions move fast because they have a major milestone release every 6 months and soon the versions will move even faster.
  - est 16y ago
    > http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/ http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/ cf,dev,7.0.503.0,6.0.495.0 what does cf mean?
    - mtklein 16y ago
      Probably Chrome Frame, which lets you run Chrome in IE.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  Smart marketing, it's perceived stability. "Oh, you're running Firefox''3.5''? my Chrome is on version 7"* (*note, I have overheard pretty much this exact conversation)
lukev 16y ago
Does anyone know if the native client is based on an abstract specification, or purely Chrome-dependent? In other words, is there a chance that other browsers might implement it in the future as well, allowing web developers to write client-side applications in any language that can compile to native code, not just Javascript? If so... the day when one can actually write and deliver any type of application through the browser, with no penalty, might actually be on the horizon. People have talked about how webapps are going to kill traditional software for the next decade. If the relevant browsers implemented this, could it finally actually happen?
- wmf 16y ago
  Here's the source code; I'm sure other browsers are welcome to use it. http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/wiki/Source http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/wiki/Source
- xtacy 16y ago
  > _People have talked about how webapps are going to kill traditional software for the next decade. If the relevant browsers implemented this, could it finally actually happen?_ I would say that the difference between webapps and desktop apps will disappear.
- jcl 16y ago
  In fact, Native Client started as a browser plugin for Firefox, so portions of it certainly could be integrated into other browsers. However, the developers have moved from the plugin to direct browser integration to overcome limitations in the plugin API. Presumably similar integration would be necessary in other browsers to achieve the same level of functionality. http://groups.google.com/group/native-client-announce/browse_thread/thread/b7818521f855f708/82e6ac9cb4d34be4?lnk=gst&q=plugin#82e6ac9cb4d34be4 http://groups.google.com/group/native-client-announce/browse...
TrevorBramble 16y ago
This basically makes Chrome a machine-independent development platform, right? They might actually pull off this web apps store idea.
- illumin8 16y ago
  Not truly machine-independent. How can you run x86 code on an ARM architecture, and vice-versa? Although if they do have this feature in Chromium it could make a huge difference in performance of web apps.
- asb 16y ago
  Not yet, but they're working on a solution using the LLVM bitcode format: http://nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/data/site/pnacl.pdf http://nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/data/site/pnacl.pdf http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/native-client-documentation-index/building-and-testing-portable-native-client http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/native-client-documenta...
amalcon 16y ago
Any updates on the security of NaCl? Every time that sort of thing has been tried, it has been a total failure from a security standpoint, and I haven't yet seen reason for NaCl to be any different.
- Pengwin 16y ago
  I've never been aware of NaCl, but when I just read what it was, I was filled with the exact same sentiment. Isn't this what ActiveX was all about? We all know what happened in that instance.
  - prodigal_erik 16y ago
    ActiveX never had a sandbox. They didn't even try to safely run untrusted binaries. "Safe for scripting" merely meant the author claimed the control was designed not to do horrible things to your system even if invoked by a malicious script on a web page.
- ary 16y ago
  This was my first concern followed by, "wait, Chrome silently auto-updates..." As far as I know it silently auto-updates across major versions as well as minor. The automatic updating of Flash 10.x that got linked on HN a little while ago is a great example of how this is good. A widely publicized hole in Native Client could turn it on its head quickly. It's a gut reaction on my part, but distributing Native Client to Chrome's user-base feels premature. It's only been an acknowledged project at Google for what, less than two years? I recall hearing about it at I/O 2009, and I'd wish they'd let it bake a while longer.
- EricBurnett 16y ago
  They are certainly trying to make it as secure as possible. It is open source, they've held at least one contest to try to break the security of it (http://code.google.com/contests/nativeclient-security/faq.html http://code.google.com/contests/nativeclient-security/faq.ht...), it is running inside a sandbox with limited permissions, etc. While it is always risky to introduce anything new, that is a price we pay for progress. And that is true for anything - at this point, I don't think using it would be too much more risky than using a new javascript engine, for example. Aside from never trying anything new, what else can we hope for? Also, I will point out that even in the dev channel it is still disabled by default. So there is some time yet for the security to be evaluated, to see if there are any endemic problems.
steve19 16y ago
Does anyone know the status of side/vertical tab bar in Chrome? Last time I looked it was incomplete and did not work in OS X. I would really like to switch but I miss treestyle tab in Firefox.

48 points by dcawrey 16y ago

wccrawford 16y ago

“–enable-nacl” ... Enable Salt? What? Ohhh... "Native Client"

InclinedPlane 16y ago
Chrome also uses the pepper plugin API.

terrellm 16y ago

Geesh they are already on version 7 and Chrome? Maybe someone at Google forgot to include the "1." in front of the version. It's interesting that Internet Explorer, which came out in 1995, is on version 9 while Chrome which came out just two years ago is already on version 7. - Edits below to address the downvotes: Maybe I didn't communicate my point clearly. I certainly didn't intend to knock Chrome - I use it along with Safari as my primary browsers. My point was more to say "come on guys, 7 versions in 2 years while everyone else (FF, IE, Safari, Opera) has had one or two?". Maybe I'm biased because I worked at a software company years ago who wanted to communicate their product was as mature as the competition's and skipped straight from version 1.0 to version 4.0. An no, I'm not implying Chrome is less mature than others.

Charuru 16y ago
Doesn't really matter. The version numbers are for internal use and for tech blogs, the consumer is never exposed to it because of the auto update.
- colonelxc 16y ago
  It's an interesting behavior though, not just Chrome, but everyone. Certain numbers have meanings (1.0 being the most famous), just like extra tags like "alpha" and "beta". They're a signal to IT folk to measure progress, and at least the perceived value of an upgrade (1.0 to 1.1 is a small change compared to 1.0 to 2.0). There's also expectations of compatibility. Files made with 1.0 should work with 1.1, but 2.0 might have breaking features that need to be looked into deeper. Of course this varies with every single piece of software. You're right that for Chrome, it doesn't matter nearly as much, because updates are automatic. I just find it very interesting to see some software shoot up quick (maybe a 1.0 after 6 months), and then other software takes a lot longer (vlc taking years and years to hit 1.0).
  - richbradshaw 16y ago
    Wine springs to mind here.
tomjen3 16y ago
This isn't unheard of - emacs is at version 22, but it is really only because they grew tired of adding 1. in front. Software versioning never made much sense in the first place.
- weaksauce 16y ago
  Well in the case of commercial software it made a lot of money by changing the UI a bit, adding a few bullet points to the comparison matrix and incrementing the version by one.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Why do you imagine that versioning should be used for anything other than milestones the development team believe are important enough to warrant bumping the major version number? Also, do you imagine that Chrome 7 is not as advanced and has not seen as much improvement as IE 7? If you look at the advancements made with each Chrome revision, they are as significant as, if not sometimes more than, the differences between major versions of Firefox or IE.
- Elepsis 16y ago
  Are you kidding? Try comparing IE3 to IE7, and Chrome 3 to Chrome 7...
js2 16y ago
This is just how Chromium does versioning. Chromium version #'s are four parts: major.minor.build.patch. Of these four parts, major.minor are "marketing" controlled. The other two parts, build.patch are engineering controlled and related to the Chromium branching strategy. Chromium develops everything on trunk. Typically, once a day, they increment the build #. The build #'s are part of their branching process. Once a branch is cut, its build # is fixed. Instead, only the patch # is incremented on that branch, again about once a day. So for example, the current stable release is milestone 5. This was built from the 375 branch. So the full version # is 5.0.375.127, which indicates that about 127 days have passed since the 375 branch was cut as you can see here: http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome?view=rev&revision=44206 http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome?view=rev&revision=... Chromium hasn't made much use of the minor part of the version #, the notable exception being 4.1. Also, historically, Chromium has aimed to release a new major version every 6 months. But they announced recently that they plan to move to an even shorter release schedule: http://blog.chromium.org/2010/07/release-early-release-often.html http://blog.chromium.org/2010/07/release-early-release-often... So if you think it's got high versions now, just wait. I notice that even though milestone 6 is only in the beta channel, the dev channel already has milestone 7 loaded in it: http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/ http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/ tl;dr: Chrome versions move fast because they have a major milestone release every 6 months and soon the versions will move even faster.
- est 16y ago
  > http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/ http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/ cf,dev,7.0.503.0,6.0.495.0 what does cf mean?
  - mtklein 16y ago
    Probably Chrome Frame, which lets you run Chrome in IE.
ErrantX 16y ago
Smart marketing, it's perceived stability. "Oh, you're running Firefox''3.5''? my Chrome is on version 7"* (*note, I have overheard pretty much this exact conversation)

lukev 16y ago

Does anyone know if the native client is based on an abstract specification, or purely Chrome-dependent? In other words, is there a chance that other browsers might implement it in the future as well, allowing web developers to write client-side applications in any language that can compile to native code, not just Javascript? If so... the day when one can actually write and deliver any type of application through the browser, with no penalty, might actually be on the horizon. People have talked about how webapps are going to kill traditional software for the next decade. If the relevant browsers implemented this, could it finally actually happen?

wmf 16y ago
Here's the source code; I'm sure other browsers are welcome to use it. http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/wiki/Source http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/wiki/Source
xtacy 16y ago
> _People have talked about how webapps are going to kill traditional software for the next decade. If the relevant browsers implemented this, could it finally actually happen?_ I would say that the difference between webapps and desktop apps will disappear.
jcl 16y ago
In fact, Native Client started as a browser plugin for Firefox, so portions of it certainly could be integrated into other browsers. However, the developers have moved from the plugin to direct browser integration to overcome limitations in the plugin API. Presumably similar integration would be necessary in other browsers to achieve the same level of functionality. http://groups.google.com/group/native-client-announce/browse_thread/thread/b7818521f855f708/82e6ac9cb4d34be4?lnk=gst&q=plugin#82e6ac9cb4d34be4 http://groups.google.com/group/native-client-announce/browse...

TrevorBramble 16y ago

This basically makes Chrome a machine-independent development platform, right? They might actually pull off this web apps store idea.

illumin8 16y ago
Not truly machine-independent. How can you run x86 code on an ARM architecture, and vice-versa? Although if they do have this feature in Chromium it could make a huge difference in performance of web apps.
asb 16y ago
Not yet, but they're working on a solution using the LLVM bitcode format: http://nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/data/site/pnacl.pdf http://nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/data/site/pnacl.pdf http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/native-client-documentation-index/building-and-testing-portable-native-client http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/native-client-documenta...

amalcon 16y ago

Any updates on the security of NaCl? Every time that sort of thing has been tried, it has been a total failure from a security standpoint, and I haven't yet seen reason for NaCl to be any different.

Pengwin 16y ago
I've never been aware of NaCl, but when I just read what it was, I was filled with the exact same sentiment. Isn't this what ActiveX was all about? We all know what happened in that instance.
- prodigal_erik 16y ago
  ActiveX never had a sandbox. They didn't even try to safely run untrusted binaries. "Safe for scripting" merely meant the author claimed the control was designed not to do horrible things to your system even if invoked by a malicious script on a web page.
ary 16y ago
This was my first concern followed by, "wait, Chrome silently auto-updates..." As far as I know it silently auto-updates across major versions as well as minor. The automatic updating of Flash 10.x that got linked on HN a little while ago is a great example of how this is good. A widely publicized hole in Native Client could turn it on its head quickly. It's a gut reaction on my part, but distributing Native Client to Chrome's user-base feels premature. It's only been an acknowledged project at Google for what, less than two years? I recall hearing about it at I/O 2009, and I'd wish they'd let it bake a while longer.
EricBurnett 16y ago
They are certainly trying to make it as secure as possible. It is open source, they've held at least one contest to try to break the security of it (http://code.google.com/contests/nativeclient-security/faq.html http://code.google.com/contests/nativeclient-security/faq.ht...), it is running inside a sandbox with limited permissions, etc. While it is always risky to introduce anything new, that is a price we pay for progress. And that is true for anything - at this point, I don't think using it would be too much more risky than using a new javascript engine, for example. Aside from never trying anything new, what else can we hope for? Also, I will point out that even in the dev channel it is still disabled by default. So there is some time yet for the security to be evaluated, to see if there are any endemic problems.

steve19 16y ago

Does anyone know the status of side/vertical tab bar in Chrome? Last time I looked it was incomplete and did not work in OS X. I would really like to switch but I miss treestyle tab in Firefox.