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It isn't practical to write a port even for every major GTK version, much less for every other toolkit used with X11. Firefox for example is still on GTK3, and

by yyyk 5y ago

It isn't practical to write a port even for every major GTK version, much less for every other toolkit used with X11. Firefox for example is still on GTK3, and so are many other applications. Haiku should want some form of generic compatibility, and this is one way to do it (I would have been lazy and used the embedded X server approach for it if I wanted to do it for some OS, but waddlesplash apparently has different tastes). Perhaps one day someone will want to do the work for a 'native' GTK4 port, but that does not degrade the important of this work for Haiku.

throwaway82652 5y ago
Using a hack of Xlib to port firefox is probably the worst possible approach, your rendering performance will be horrible and you still get to deal with the pain of the impedance mismatch from using a different API from what your system is designed to do. I get the desire to take shortcuts to get things ported quickly but that will not actually help in making these applications properly usable.
- yyyk 5y ago
  Firefox was just one example. There's no practical way to port everything a user might desire - everyone has their own 90% as the saying/joke goes. Haiku needs a generic mechanism, and well, this is one way. Apparently waddlesplash likes this way, and is willing to invest doing the work. This is commendable and will help Haiku adoption. It's also technically interesting and cool enough for a HN post. I will say that I don't think it's the best path for an alternative OS, and other AltOSs might wish to pick a different path. IMHO, Reimplementing POSIX is a mug's game, a lot of work, while Linux will always be ahead and POSIX isn't much good anyway. Microsoft showed the way with WSL2. This would be a better path for alt OSs in general: A. Implement the OS with almost no compromises. Ignore POSIX/X11/etc. if they don't match the vision. B. Port/Create a few application to show and use the benefits of the OS and whatever it brings to the table. C. Implement an equivalent of WSL2 which should give broad compatibility at the relatively low cost of keeping up with a Linux kernel, given the kernel's rather good backward compat record we wouldn't have to be very prompt with porting new versions. At which point users would have a good reason to use the OS (B.) and no practical shortage of apps (C.) even if the experience with these apps would be somewhat lacking. One can then concentrate on improving the OS or on porting the most used applications. This acts like a Cuckoo - in the beginning, there'll a mostly Linux userland with a few AltOS apps. Eventually one ports enough so that the system is really AltOS with a few Linux apps on the side.

by yyyk 5y ago

throwaway82652 5y ago

Using a hack of Xlib to port firefox is probably the worst possible approach, your rendering performance will be horrible and you still get to deal with the pain of the impedance mismatch from using a different API from what your system is designed to do. I get the desire to take shortcuts to get things ported quickly but that will not actually help in making these applications properly usable.

yyyk 5y ago
Firefox was just one example. There's no practical way to port everything a user might desire - everyone has their own 90% as the saying/joke goes. Haiku needs a generic mechanism, and well, this is one way. Apparently waddlesplash likes this way, and is willing to invest doing the work. This is commendable and will help Haiku adoption. It's also technically interesting and cool enough for a HN post. I will say that I don't think it's the best path for an alternative OS, and other AltOSs might wish to pick a different path. IMHO, Reimplementing POSIX is a mug's game, a lot of work, while Linux will always be ahead and POSIX isn't much good anyway. Microsoft showed the way with WSL2. This would be a better path for alt OSs in general: A. Implement the OS with almost no compromises. Ignore POSIX/X11/etc. if they don't match the vision. B. Port/Create a few application to show and use the benefits of the OS and whatever it brings to the table. C. Implement an equivalent of WSL2 which should give broad compatibility at the relatively low cost of keeping up with a Linux kernel, given the kernel's rather good backward compat record we wouldn't have to be very prompt with porting new versions. At which point users would have a good reason to use the OS (B.) and no practical shortage of apps (C.) even if the experience with these apps would be somewhat lacking. One can then concentrate on improving the OS or on porting the most used applications. This acts like a Cuckoo - in the beginning, there'll a mostly Linux userland with a few AltOS apps. Eventually one ports enough so that the system is really AltOS with a few Linux apps on the side.