Re: [Gimp-developer] New GIMP configure warning/error

[Simone Karin Lehmann <simone lisanet de>]

> Am 13.05.2017 um 15:50 schrieb Jehan Pagès <jehan marmottard gmail com>:
>
>
> We have a few issues with our webkit internal browser, one of them is
> that we still use an old webkit version (because of GTK+2; newer
> versions are for GTK+3), which is therefore deprecated. Security wise,
> this is not fine. Though obviously since this browser is made only to
> reach our manual, which are static pages, and cannot be used to reach
> random pages, the risk is lessened. That's even more a reason to make
> sure we have SSL/TLS activated, because if GIMP requests the help
> browser to reach https://gimp.org, we want to drop the connection in
> case of MITM, especially because of the broken webkit.
>
> This issue will disappear with GIMP 3, where we should be able to
> update the dependency. This will still be some work to do so. Maybe at
> this point, it could be wise to just drop the webkit dependency and
> make the browser do all the work. On the other hand, a minimal help
> browser is still nice. That's not an easy decision IMO.
>
> We could also drop the help browser even for GTK+2 builds, but then it
> needs some minimal patch to not have GIMP consider this as a lesser
> GIMP. If not mistaken, when the browser is not built-in, right now
> GIMP would complain and display a popup asking you if you want to use
> your web browser instead. We would need to get rid of this warning if
> we start considering the system browser as the defaults display mode
> of the manual. That's probably really easy, but I have more pressing
> things I want to do for 2.10. Patches are welcome for discussion
> though. I believe it still makes sense in a security point of view
> considering the deprecated webkit we use, so I would be in favor of
> the patch (even if just as a temporary fix until we get to GIMP 3 and
> can migrate to newer webkit).

I’ve just made those patches for OS X and included them into my version on gimp.lisanet.de. 
It just uses the system defined web browser for accessing online help and I’ve even written 
a plugin which replaces the help browser with the system-wide web browser and still offers 
context sensitive help. 

Just have a look at my patches at my SorceForge SVN repository 
https://sourceforge.net/p/gimponosx/code/HEAD/tree/GimpPorts/ports/graphics/gimp2/files/
They are just a few lines of Cocoa API calls...

Simone