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I keep hearing about Servo (and compiling it every now and again), but I really don't know - is Servo meant to eventually, maybe replace Gecko? Or is it/will it

I keep hearing about Servo (and compiling it every now and again), but I really don't know - is Servo meant to eventually, maybe replace Gecko? Or is it/will it always be just a Rust playground? It seems like it could seal Rust as a player if Servo became "A Thing" for real. What's the plan?

wmf 12y ago
It doesn't make sense to me that Mozilla would spend this much effort on a playground. I suspect they're managing expectations when they say it's not intended to replace Gecko.
xKingfisher 12y ago
As far as I know, there are no plans to replace Gecko, though they may pull in parts or ideas from Servo. Servo is still primarily a research project into parallelizing a web browser.
bobajeff 12y ago
I'm sure they want to replace Gecko with Servo but they can't because it doesn't have xul/xpcom and it never will. There was a post a while back about a side project called Firefox.html which is to rewrite the interface in html5 instead of xul. Anyways they shouldn't replace gecko but instead make a new browser with it's own branding like the Internet Explorer team is doing with Spartan. Because no matter what Mozilla does with Firefox it will never gain market share because they've lost momentum and don't have resources it takes to brute force users to their product like the big guys have.
- stefanix 12y ago
  "never" and "lost" aren't words I would use with Mozilla. Their vision is solid with lots of innovation going on. They have major market share. They are light years ahead in terms of privacy and repeatedly beat all the other browsers in performance benchmarks. Afaik, XUL is already replaced on the mobile Firefox version. Would not expect it in Rust at all.
  - bobajeff 12y ago
    Why, because of all of those buzz words? Name any company that doesn't have vision and innovation going on. Also, name any browser that doesn't repeatedly beat the others in benchmarks. The facts are Firefox has not only lost momentum (as in stopped gaining market share) it's been losing market share.
TehCorwiz 12y ago
He says in the video that since the bar to entry into the browser space means feature/speed parity (because if it isn't faster than what we're already doing what's the point) that it will eventually be a complete browser. What isn't covered is whether it will replace the gecko engine or if it will become a new browser entirely.
- RubyPinch 12y ago
  >(because if it isn't faster than what we're already doing what's the point) stability, security, etc having no more page corruption issues would be nice
higherpurpose 12y ago
I believe they've already said that it will replace Gecko on Android and in Firefox OS (this year). It's 2x faster than Gecko on a single core and 3x faster on four cores. If it's really that good (and so much safer, as Firefox tends to be the browser with the most vulnerabilities) then it would be crazy for them not to build it into a full browser eventually. Microsoft is doing it, so they should do it as well. Maybe with a new browser they can make Electrolysis be much more optimized as well. I think the main reason it takes them so long to get multi-process to work is because they have to optimize around Firefox's quirks, and I'm worried it still won't end up as safe or as quick as Chrome's multi-process system, which was built for Chrome from day one. In a new browser it might work much better.
- lastontheboat 12y ago
  Not quite, and certainly not this year. We've said that we want to release an alpha version of something powered by Servo on Android this year; the Firefox OS work is just another good way to show viability of our ideas - it would be a huge feat of engineering to get it ready to ship on devices under the Firefox OS banner.
keeperofdakeys 12y ago
It's too early, really. You don't take an experiment, and say "This will replace our main, stable product." You keep investing in it on the side until either, it's mature enough to make that decision, or it fails for some reason. At the moment there is plenty of steam behind Servo, and it's growing all the time. So an optimistic outlook is that it will mature, and have a chance of becoming a full-fledged product. However problems might prick up, maybe Rust isn't quite as good for this as they think, maybe the experimental parallel architecture doesn't fully pan out. You can only make these kinds of observations when you've implemented most, if not all of the features required for the final product.
gulpahum 12y ago
In the video (at 35:39), they show the future plans and the plan is to start using bits of Servo code in Gecko. So, they will replace small parts of C++ code with Rust. http://youtu.be/7q9vIMXSTzc?t=35m39s http://youtu.be/7q9vIMXSTzc?t=35m39s One plan was to first replace easy parts, like image decoders (bmp/ico formats). https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Mozlandia-Rust-In-Gecko#how-do-we-ship-a-feature https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Mozlandia-Rust-In-Gecko#... It won't be a one big replacement, more like a gradual take over.

wmf 12y ago

It doesn't make sense to me that Mozilla would spend this much effort on a playground. I suspect they're managing expectations when they say it's not intended to replace Gecko.

xKingfisher 12y ago

As far as I know, there are no plans to replace Gecko, though they may pull in parts or ideas from Servo. Servo is still primarily a research project into parallelizing a web browser.

bobajeff 12y ago

I'm sure they want to replace Gecko with Servo but they can't because it doesn't have xul/xpcom and it never will. There was a post a while back about a side project called Firefox.html which is to rewrite the interface in html5 instead of xul. Anyways they shouldn't replace gecko but instead make a new browser with it's own branding like the Internet Explorer team is doing with Spartan. Because no matter what Mozilla does with Firefox it will never gain market share because they've lost momentum and don't have resources it takes to brute force users to their product like the big guys have.

stefanix 12y ago
"never" and "lost" aren't words I would use with Mozilla. Their vision is solid with lots of innovation going on. They have major market share. They are light years ahead in terms of privacy and repeatedly beat all the other browsers in performance benchmarks. Afaik, XUL is already replaced on the mobile Firefox version. Would not expect it in Rust at all.
- bobajeff 12y ago
  Why, because of all of those buzz words? Name any company that doesn't have vision and innovation going on. Also, name any browser that doesn't repeatedly beat the others in benchmarks. The facts are Firefox has not only lost momentum (as in stopped gaining market share) it's been losing market share.

TehCorwiz 12y ago

He says in the video that since the bar to entry into the browser space means feature/speed parity (because if it isn't faster than what we're already doing what's the point) that it will eventually be a complete browser. What isn't covered is whether it will replace the gecko engine or if it will become a new browser entirely.

RubyPinch 12y ago
>(because if it isn't faster than what we're already doing what's the point) stability, security, etc having no more page corruption issues would be nice

higherpurpose 12y ago

I believe they've already said that it will replace Gecko on Android and in Firefox OS (this year). It's 2x faster than Gecko on a single core and 3x faster on four cores. If it's really that good (and so much safer, as Firefox tends to be the browser with the most vulnerabilities) then it would be crazy for them not to build it into a full browser eventually. Microsoft is doing it, so they should do it as well. Maybe with a new browser they can make Electrolysis be much more optimized as well. I think the main reason it takes them so long to get multi-process to work is because they have to optimize around Firefox's quirks, and I'm worried it still won't end up as safe or as quick as Chrome's multi-process system, which was built for Chrome from day one. In a new browser it might work much better.

lastontheboat 12y ago
Not quite, and certainly not this year. We've said that we want to release an alpha version of something powered by Servo on Android this year; the Firefox OS work is just another good way to show viability of our ideas - it would be a huge feat of engineering to get it ready to ship on devices under the Firefox OS banner.

keeperofdakeys 12y ago

It's too early, really. You don't take an experiment, and say "This will replace our main, stable product." You keep investing in it on the side until either, it's mature enough to make that decision, or it fails for some reason. At the moment there is plenty of steam behind Servo, and it's growing all the time. So an optimistic outlook is that it will mature, and have a chance of becoming a full-fledged product. However problems might prick up, maybe Rust isn't quite as good for this as they think, maybe the experimental parallel architecture doesn't fully pan out. You can only make these kinds of observations when you've implemented most, if not all of the features required for the final product.

gulpahum 12y ago

In the video (at 35:39), they show the future plans and the plan is to start using bits of Servo code in Gecko. So, they will replace small parts of C++ code with Rust. http://youtu.be/7q9vIMXSTzc?t=35m39s http://youtu.be/7q9vIMXSTzc?t=35m39s One plan was to first replace easy parts, like image decoders (bmp/ico formats). https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Mozlandia-Rust-In-Gecko#how-do-we-ship-a-feature https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Mozlandia-Rust-In-Gecko#... It won't be a one big replacement, more like a gradual take over.