Re: [Geary] WebKit 2 port status?

[Michael Gratton <mike vee net>]

Hey Adam,

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 2:18 AM, Adam Dingle <adam medovina org> wrote:
> It's been a few months since we've had much discussion of the WebKit 
> 2 port effort here.  Can you give us a brief status update?  Does 
> this exist in nascent form on a branch somewhere?  Roughly when do 
> you see this landing?  Is there an opportunity for others to help out 
> with the effort if so inclined?


Thanks for prodding me about this.

TL;DR summary: The WebKit2 port is waiting for the conversation viewer 
to be converted to use GTK widgets[0] before going ahead. Both that and 
the WK2 port are the main blockers for the 0.12 release. Slow (but 
steady) progress is being made, and it should be released before the 
end of the year.

Converting the conversation viewer to use GTK widgets is a blocker for 
the WK2 port since it reduces the number and volume of IPC calls 
required between Geary and the isolated WK2 web processes, both needing 
to be (re)implemented for the WK2 port and executed at at runtime. It 
still has a longish list of mostly minor issues, including some that 
are recursively blocked on the WK2 port, however there's only a few 
composer-related problems left before I'm planning on landing it on 
master for testing and feedback.

I will be looking into WK2 port as soon as the GTK widget conversion 
does land, but if anyone wants to make an early start (please do! ;), 
then basing it off of the `wip/765516-gtk-widget-conversation-viewer` 
branch is essential. That branch has seen a lot of "git push --force" 
churn since I have been frequently rebasing it off of master to keep it 
up to date,b ut will happily stop being antisocial like that if anyone 
wants to look at WK2. People who are keen should drop me an email via 
the list and hop on IRC so we can coordinate.

Given my commitments IRL (I have been especially flat-out busy this 
month), the GTK widget conversion probably won't land until early/mid 
next month. Beyond that I'm hoping the WK2 port will be finished so as 
to be able to get 0.12 out the door before the end of the year.

Also, just a quick note about the security concerns noted in Michael's 
blog that you mentioned: After that post was published, the WebKitGTK+ 
team did release some fixes for a number of security issues (but 
definitely not all[1]) for the WK1 library. People should ensure their 
distro is up to date and they have has WebKitGTK 2.4.10 or preferably 
2.4.11 installed. For LTS distros that means:
- Ubuntu: Trusty or later with the Security Updates repository enabled
- Fedora: F23 + updates
- Debian: Testing or unstable (stable-bpo only has a backport for 
WK2GTK so stable users will need that and Geary 0.12)

//Mike

[0] - Bug 765516: <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765516>
[1] - 
<https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2016/03/30/positive-progress-on-webkitgtk-security-updates/>

--
⊨ Michael Gratton, Percept Wrangler.
⚙ <http://mjog.vee.net/>