WebKit release cycle and dependency request

[Alp Toker <alp webkit org>]

You may already have heard that the WebKit/GTK+ developers have been 
exploring options for a release cycle. Here I'm going to outline our 
plans in a little more detail.

WebKit/GTK+ is a community sub-project maintained mostly by GNOME and 
GTK+ developers. It's implemented directly on top of GTK+, GLib and 
GNOME libraries and provides lightweight web viewing and editing 
features as well as being the basis for complete web browser 
applications. It supports the latest web standards and offers good 
performance and memory usage characteristics on the desktop and in 
mobile devices.

As a result of the productive collaboration with the GNOME project and 
after consultation with the GNOME board and release team, we've decided 
to implement a stable 6-month release cycle that matches the GNOME 
schedule, effective immediately, targeting the upcoming 2.24 release.

I'm also taking this opportunity to request an external dependency for 
GNOME and to poke Ross about including WebKit in the Mobile Platform 
(not much happened since it was proposed in June).

Module versioning
=================

The package name is webkit-1.0. Shared objects and headers are named and 
versioned according to GTK+ platform and module guidelines.

API/ABI stability
=================

The API is currently "slushy" so we'll make a few tweaks to the loader 
API (as requested by the Epiphany developers) and add more features 
before freezing for 2.24. In the past we've taken care to fix 
applications directly in GNOME SVN following API changes made in the 
development cycle.

Once stabilised, we'll follow a policy of additions only, with old 
symbols marked deprecated in gtk-doc.

Documentation
=============

There's a coding guideline requiring all functions, properties and 
signals to be documented with gtk-doc so the documentation situation is 
pretty good.

Furthermore, public API changes are expected to be accompanied by a 
rationale and "cooling off" period allowing the community to study them 
before they're reviewed and go in so there's usually a trail describing 
why things are the way they are.

GDK targets
===========

WebKit works with all platforms and windowing targets supported by GDK 
and provides the same stable GObject API everywhere. (Windows support is 
still in development but not far off.)

Language bindings
=================

WebKit bindings are available for Python, C#/CLR, Vala and Perl.

Some of the bindings cover not just the GObject API but also provide 
integration with the browser engine. WebKit is designed to be extensible 
using any supported language via DOM access and bi-directional runtime 
integration -- "extension" or add-in systems aren't limited to JavaScript.

Mobile
======

WebKit/GTK+ is the default browser engine in the OpenMoko and Poky 
mobile Linux distributions. There's ongoing work to develop WebKit/GTK+ 
for the Maemo platform and a couple of other upcoming mobile GTK+ 
deployments yet to be announced. Ports exist to over a dozen devices 
including phones, e-paper readers and set top boxes.

Accessibility
=============

In the last few weeks we've started to look at formal accessibility 
support for document navigation and manipulation. The first WebCore 
patches have landed and we intend to provide AT-SPI accessibility for 
the 2.24 release. This is partly in response to requests from the 
community and Yelp developers.

Informally, WebKit is already quite accessible -- content can be 
navigated and manipulated using only the keyboard and can be scaled for 
easy viewing.

Security
========

We're fairly open about fixing and publicising security issues and 
there's now a process for confidentially reporting issues and 
disseminating alerts. We're establishing channels with Linux 
distributions planning to ship WebKit/GTK+ soon. (If your organisation 
needs to be on this list, you can reply in private to this mail or use 
the security list.)

Applications
============

Epiphany recently switched to WebKit and requires the dependency. I 
believe other applications in the platform and desktop set have WebKit 
on the roadmap. Some other (GNOME and ISV) users are listed at 
<http://trac.webkit.org/projects/webkit/wiki/ApplicationsGtk>

A note on project maintenance
=============================

While we work closely with the Apple and Trolltech WebKit teams it's 
worth keeping in mind that the WebKit/GTK+ team is autonomous -- we 
decide what features we ship and we set our own goals. In making this 
announcement we'd like to invite the GNOME community to get more 
involved in that process.