8 ms·

Servo: Embeddable Browser Engine

192 points by Manishearth 12y ago

nashashmi 12y ago
If anybody is having connection issue: https://www.readability.com/articles/16xpxxli https://www.readability.com/articles/16xpxxli
- chadzawistowski 12y ago
  Hmm, this looks to be a different article.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    That's what Google returns when searching for the thread's article. Usually the first result is the right one.
  - cmrx64 12y ago
    Yeah, completely different, and much older.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
agumonkey 12y ago
cache: http://web.archive.org/web/20150513190529/http://blogs.s-osg.org/servo-the-embeddable-browser-engine/ http://web.archive.org/web/20150513190529/http://blogs.s-osg...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
shmerl 12y ago
So, may be KDE should use embedded Servo instead of Qt WebKit? Or even better, make that engine pluggable to allow choice?
- pcwalton 12y ago
  I believe the Qt WebEngine uses the unstable Chromium Content API directly. So it would have to be rewritten on top of a stable API, like CEF, first.
- repsilat 12y ago
  It would certainly make for some curious history. I guess this was tongue in cheek? EDIT: for those wanting context, WebKit started its life as fork of the KDE project's KHTML, and has gone on to supplant it. Having KDE ditch WebKit for Servo (no doubt with Safari and Chromium still using WebKit-based renderers) would be an strange state of affairs.
  - shmerl 12y ago
    Even if "strange" it would be a good state of affairs, since Servo is definitely going to have better performance (and I expect security). Plus it might help Debian to avoid some concerns they had recently regarding KDE packaging.
    - duaneb 12y ago
      > Servo is definitely going to have better performance (and I expect security). Is this clear? The multi-core rendering surely can't be used for every page.
      - grayrest 11y ago
        Doing everything in parallel is pretty much the point of the project. I'm not directly involved but I have been watching the project. There a few specific parts of layout that can't be parallelized[0] but pretty much every page [1][2] has work that can be done in parallel. The last batch of perf numbers I know of is from last November [3] and I'm unaware of any major perf regressions. [0] http://pcwalton.github.io/blog/2014/02/25/revamped-parallel-layout-in-servo/ http://pcwalton.github.io/blog/2014/02/25/revamped-parallel-... [1] https://github.com/servo/servo/pull/4969 https://github.com/servo/servo/pull/4969 [2] http://blog.servo.org/2015/04/02/twis-29/ http://blog.servo.org/2015/04/02/twis-29/ (scroll down) [3] http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/LinuxConEU2014.pdf http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/...
alphonse23 12y ago
That little wordpress blog can't handle headline HN's traffic. Apache just doesn't cut it anymore these days.
- ericb 12y ago
  Properly configured, Apache scales just fine. This site looks like it is running out of database connections. That's not something you can blame Apache for.
- AlisdairO 12y ago
  HN traffic is substantial but really not that intense. Apache is incredibly unlikely to be the limiting factor.
kodablah 12y ago
Is Servo going to employ a multi-process model like Chromium? I am afraid so which makes it very tough for embedding. I see cef_execute_process [1] and what not are not implemented. Are there plans to implement that far up the embedding API? Hopefully a single-process-yet-multiple-page/tab embedded servo is fully supported (unlike --single-process for CEF/Chromium). 1 - https://github.com/servo/servo/blob/master/ports/cef/core.rs#L100 https://github.com/servo/servo/blob/master/ports/cef/core.rs...
- pcwalton 12y ago
  Yes, Servo is going to go multi-process. There's a PR to do that already (though it needs a good amount of forward porting at this point). It's hard to say about single-process mode; it'll stay maintained as long as someone's willing to do the maintenance. There isn't anything that's inherently multiprocess about the architecture (for example, there are basically no global variables anywhere in Servo), in any case, so I don't imagine it'll be hard to keep it running. I don't want to make any promises, though.
  - higherpurpose 12y ago
    Any thoughts on going multi-"app container" in the future as well? https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/05/11/microsoft-edge-building-a-safer-browser/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/05/11/microsoft-edg...
    - pcwalton 12y ago
      That's essentially a detail of the Windows sandbox implementation. Servo's sandboxing story is Rust's gaol library [1], which has no support for Windows yet, but any multiprocess deployment on Windows would want to be accompanied by a sandbox utilizing those kinds of features. [1]: https://github.com/pcwalton/gaol https://github.com/pcwalton/gaol
  - infogulch 12y ago
    What are the benefits of multi-process over merely multi-threaded for a guaranteed memory- and thread-safe language like rust? In the Chromium Multi-process Architecture design document[0] the benefits boil down to security and stability. While memory safety doesn't guarantee secure logic, it obviates a large class of bugs that a multi-process architecture is designed to counteract. While memory safety doesn't prevent deadlocks, it does completely prevent data race conditions. [0]: https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/multi-process-architecture https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/multi-p...
AlisdairO 12y ago
Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2ziypEdabXcJ:blogs.s-osg.org/servo-continues-pushing-forward/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2ziypEd...
- itistoday2 11y ago
  Different post. agumonkey posted the right one.
pc2g4d 12y ago
Error establishing a database connection
Animats 12y ago
Another step forward towards the post C/C++ world.
ausjke 11y ago
so how is Servo different from Chromium Embedded Framework and what value it brings?
- grayrest 11y ago
  CEF is the API used to embed Webkit (now Blink). Servo is Mozilla's new research rendering engine, it's adopting the CEF API to make embedding easier for people.
- PudgePacket 11y ago
  https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Design#overview-and-goals https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Design#overview-and-goal...
haberman 11y ago
Is it possible with this API to run headless? I always lamented that you can't make a command-line, programmable tool that is a fully robust implementation of the web. It would be very cool if this could enable it.
- therein 11y ago
  Selenium Webdriver [1] or PhantomJS [2] might be what you are looking for. [1] http://docs.seleniumhq.org/projects/webdriver/ http://docs.seleniumhq.org/projects/webdriver/ [2] http://phantomjs.org http://phantomjs.org
- pcwalton 11y ago
  You could probably rig up a headless implementation, as CEF doesn't create its own windows if you run it in offscreen mode (as any widget embedder would do). Servo does have a "true" headless mode (headless.rs) as well that we use for running tests, though it's not exposed through CEF at the moment.
- Manishearth 11y ago
  Servo itself can run fully headless right now; though I'm not sure how it's implemented.
ksec 11y ago
Would License be an issue? I see GPL / LGPL, MIT / BSD or Apache as being mainstream. Why MPL again.
- justinjlynn 11y ago
  I'm sure that it's because Mozilla is comfortable with it. In reality, they don't owe us anything in particular. They chose a licence that works for them, is OSI Open Source(tm) approved and is compatible with a number of other licences (Apache, GPL, et al). Good enough.
- the_why_of_y 11y ago
  The MPLv2 is a very nice license that deserves wider use. MPLv2 is a weak (file-scoped) copyleft that avoids some of the provisions in (L)GPL that drive corporate lawyers raving mad, it's explicitly compatible with (L)GPLv2+ thus avoiding balkanization, and it does have a modern patent grant clause like ALv2/(L)GPLv3.
frik 11y ago
I can't wait til I can use Servo with a basic HTML based UI on Win7 - like Phoenix 0.1 for WinXP, picture: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Phoenix_0.1.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Phoenix_0... History: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox#Naming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox#Naming
- Manishearth 11y ago
  We have servo-shell as an HTML UI[0], which is pretty nice. Windows support is still a while away. You can help out[1], though! [0]: https://github.com/glennw/servo-shell https://github.com/glennw/servo-shell [1]: https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/1908 https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/1908
tinganho 11y ago
I hope that they can switch out Atom with this.
some1else 11y ago
Tangential question: Is it possible to parallelize constraint-based layouts? Update: There is paper[1] describing layout parallelization with 80x performance increases. However, I'm not sure it works on constraint-based layouts, such as GSS[2]. [1] https://lmeyerov.github.io/projects/pbrowser/pubfiles/paper.pdf https://lmeyerov.github.io/projects/pbrowser/pubfiles/paper.... [2] http://gridstylesheets.org/guides/ccss/ http://gridstylesheets.org/guides/ccss/
- Manishearth 11y ago
  From http://kmcallister.github.io/papers/2015-servo-experience-report-draft1.pdf http://kmcallister.github.io/papers/2015-servo-experience-re... > Ras Bodik’s group at the University of California Berkeley worked on a parallel browsing project (funded in part by Mozilla Research) that focused on improving the parallelism of layout. Instead of our approach to parallel layout, which focuses on multiple parallel tree traversals, they modeled a subset of CSS using attribute grammars. They showed significant speedups with their system over a reimplementation of Safari’s algorithms, but we have not used this approach due to questions of whether it is possible to use attribute grammars to both accurately model the web as it is implemented today and to support new features as they are added. Servo uses a very similar CSS selector matching algorithm to theirs.

192 points by Manishearth 12y ago

If anybody is having connection issue: https://www.readability.com/articles/16xpxxli https://www.readability.com/articles/16xpxxli

chadzawistowski 12y ago
Hmm, this looks to be a different article.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  That's what Google returns when searching for the thread's article. Usually the first result is the right one.
- cmrx64 12y ago
  Yeah, completely different, and much older.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

agumonkey 12y ago

cache: http://web.archive.org/web/20150513190529/http://blogs.s-osg.org/servo-the-embeddable-browser-engine/ http://web.archive.org/web/20150513190529/http://blogs.s-osg...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

shmerl 12y ago

So, may be KDE should use embedded Servo instead of Qt WebKit? Or even better, make that engine pluggable to allow choice?

pcwalton 12y ago
I believe the Qt WebEngine uses the unstable Chromium Content API directly. So it would have to be rewritten on top of a stable API, like CEF, first.
repsilat 12y ago
It would certainly make for some curious history. I guess this was tongue in cheek? EDIT: for those wanting context, WebKit started its life as fork of the KDE project's KHTML, and has gone on to supplant it. Having KDE ditch WebKit for Servo (no doubt with Safari and Chromium still using WebKit-based renderers) would be an strange state of affairs.
- shmerl 12y ago
  Even if "strange" it would be a good state of affairs, since Servo is definitely going to have better performance (and I expect security). Plus it might help Debian to avoid some concerns they had recently regarding KDE packaging.
  - duaneb 12y ago
    > Servo is definitely going to have better performance (and I expect security). Is this clear? The multi-core rendering surely can't be used for every page.
    - grayrest 11y ago
      Doing everything in parallel is pretty much the point of the project. I'm not directly involved but I have been watching the project. There a few specific parts of layout that can't be parallelized[0] but pretty much every page [1][2] has work that can be done in parallel. The last batch of perf numbers I know of is from last November [3] and I'm unaware of any major perf regressions. [0] http://pcwalton.github.io/blog/2014/02/25/revamped-parallel-layout-in-servo/ http://pcwalton.github.io/blog/2014/02/25/revamped-parallel-... [1] https://github.com/servo/servo/pull/4969 https://github.com/servo/servo/pull/4969 [2] http://blog.servo.org/2015/04/02/twis-29/ http://blog.servo.org/2015/04/02/twis-29/ (scroll down) [3] http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/LinuxConEU2014.pdf http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/...

alphonse23 12y ago

That little wordpress blog can't handle headline HN's traffic. Apache just doesn't cut it anymore these days.

ericb 12y ago
Properly configured, Apache scales just fine. This site looks like it is running out of database connections. That's not something you can blame Apache for.
AlisdairO 12y ago
HN traffic is substantial but really not that intense. Apache is incredibly unlikely to be the limiting factor.

kodablah 12y ago

Is Servo going to employ a multi-process model like Chromium? I am afraid so which makes it very tough for embedding. I see cef_execute_process [1] and what not are not implemented. Are there plans to implement that far up the embedding API? Hopefully a single-process-yet-multiple-page/tab embedded servo is fully supported (unlike --single-process for CEF/Chromium). 1 - https://github.com/servo/servo/blob/master/ports/cef/core.rs#L100 https://github.com/servo/servo/blob/master/ports/cef/core.rs...

pcwalton 12y ago
Yes, Servo is going to go multi-process. There's a PR to do that already (though it needs a good amount of forward porting at this point). It's hard to say about single-process mode; it'll stay maintained as long as someone's willing to do the maintenance. There isn't anything that's inherently multiprocess about the architecture (for example, there are basically no global variables anywhere in Servo), in any case, so I don't imagine it'll be hard to keep it running. I don't want to make any promises, though.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  Any thoughts on going multi-"app container" in the future as well? https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/05/11/microsoft-edge-building-a-safer-browser/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/05/11/microsoft-edg...
  - pcwalton 12y ago
    That's essentially a detail of the Windows sandbox implementation. Servo's sandboxing story is Rust's gaol library [1], which has no support for Windows yet, but any multiprocess deployment on Windows would want to be accompanied by a sandbox utilizing those kinds of features. [1]: https://github.com/pcwalton/gaol https://github.com/pcwalton/gaol
- infogulch 12y ago
  What are the benefits of multi-process over merely multi-threaded for a guaranteed memory- and thread-safe language like rust? In the Chromium Multi-process Architecture design document[0] the benefits boil down to security and stability. While memory safety doesn't guarantee secure logic, it obviates a large class of bugs that a multi-process architecture is designed to counteract. While memory safety doesn't prevent deadlocks, it does completely prevent data race conditions. [0]: https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/multi-process-architecture https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/multi-p...

AlisdairO 12y ago

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2ziypEdabXcJ:blogs.s-osg.org/servo-continues-pushing-forward/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2ziypEd...

itistoday2 11y ago
Different post. agumonkey posted the right one.

pc2g4d 12y ago

Error establishing a database connection

Animats 12y ago

Another step forward towards the post C/C++ world.

ausjke 11y ago

so how is Servo different from Chromium Embedded Framework and what value it brings?

grayrest 11y ago
CEF is the API used to embed Webkit (now Blink). Servo is Mozilla's new research rendering engine, it's adopting the CEF API to make embedding easier for people.
PudgePacket 11y ago
https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Design#overview-and-goals https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Design#overview-and-goal...

haberman 11y ago

Is it possible with this API to run headless? I always lamented that you can't make a command-line, programmable tool that is a fully robust implementation of the web. It would be very cool if this could enable it.

therein 11y ago
Selenium Webdriver [1] or PhantomJS [2] might be what you are looking for. [1] http://docs.seleniumhq.org/projects/webdriver/ http://docs.seleniumhq.org/projects/webdriver/ [2] http://phantomjs.org http://phantomjs.org
pcwalton 11y ago
You could probably rig up a headless implementation, as CEF doesn't create its own windows if you run it in offscreen mode (as any widget embedder would do). Servo does have a "true" headless mode (headless.rs) as well that we use for running tests, though it's not exposed through CEF at the moment.
Manishearth 11y ago
Servo itself can run fully headless right now; though I'm not sure how it's implemented.

ksec 11y ago

Would License be an issue? I see GPL / LGPL, MIT / BSD or Apache as being mainstream. Why MPL again.

justinjlynn 11y ago
I'm sure that it's because Mozilla is comfortable with it. In reality, they don't owe us anything in particular. They chose a licence that works for them, is OSI Open Source(tm) approved and is compatible with a number of other licences (Apache, GPL, et al). Good enough.
the_why_of_y 11y ago
The MPLv2 is a very nice license that deserves wider use. MPLv2 is a weak (file-scoped) copyleft that avoids some of the provisions in (L)GPL that drive corporate lawyers raving mad, it's explicitly compatible with (L)GPLv2+ thus avoiding balkanization, and it does have a modern patent grant clause like ALv2/(L)GPLv3.

frik 11y ago

I can't wait til I can use Servo with a basic HTML based UI on Win7 - like Phoenix 0.1 for WinXP, picture: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Phoenix_0.1.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Phoenix_0... History: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox#Naming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox#Naming

Manishearth 11y ago
We have servo-shell as an HTML UI[0], which is pretty nice. Windows support is still a while away. You can help out[1], though! [0]: https://github.com/glennw/servo-shell https://github.com/glennw/servo-shell [1]: https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/1908 https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/1908

tinganho 11y ago

I hope that they can switch out Atom with this.

some1else 11y ago

Tangential question: Is it possible to parallelize constraint-based layouts? Update: There is paper[1] describing layout parallelization with 80x performance increases. However, I'm not sure it works on constraint-based layouts, such as GSS[2]. [1] https://lmeyerov.github.io/projects/pbrowser/pubfiles/paper.pdf https://lmeyerov.github.io/projects/pbrowser/pubfiles/paper.... [2] http://gridstylesheets.org/guides/ccss/ http://gridstylesheets.org/guides/ccss/

Manishearth 11y ago
From http://kmcallister.github.io/papers/2015-servo-experience-report-draft1.pdf http://kmcallister.github.io/papers/2015-servo-experience-re... > Ras Bodik’s group at the University of California Berkeley worked on a parallel browsing project (funded in part by Mozilla Research) that focused on improving the parallelism of layout. Instead of our approach to parallel layout, which focuses on multiple parallel tree traversals, they modeled a subset of CSS using attribute grammars. They showed significant speedups with their system over a reimplementation of Safari’s algorithms, but we have not used this approach due to questions of whether it is possible to use attribute grammars to both accurately model the web as it is implemented today and to support new features as they are added. Servo uses a very similar CSS selector matching algorithm to theirs.