[rfc][icedtea-web] IcedTea-Web for Windows

[Jacob Wisor]

Hello there!

I was thinking about bringing IcedTea-Web to Windows for quite some time now. So 
I have looked into the current plug-in code for Un*x systems. Unfortunately, it 
has dependencies on pthreads and GTK+. Although these could be compiled in 
statically, this would actually not solve all the problems to it.
Mainly, three things would not work.
First, error logging. Because Windows has slightly different pipe and IPC 
semantics to POSIX the current code makes to many assumptions on their behavior 
while only applicable to POSIX. Although I am pretty sure the GTK+ library tries 
to resemble POSIX semantics as close as possible, or abstract them away with its 
concept of channels, I am also sure that we would run into some bogus and hard 
to track down bugs later on. Error logging from Java applications has to be 
designed on Windows quite differently.

Second, sub-process shutdown. Windows has some quite different process semantics 
than POSIX. Terminating the JVM in-process server in Windows properly requires 
really Windows specific code. Ports of pthreads and GTK+ won't do much here.

Third, plug-in registration, detection, and install/uninstall. These tasks 
involve the Windows registry, which of course is highly Windows specific. GTK+ 
has nothing to offer here. And lastly (or forth), getting the plug-in on the 
Internet Explorer is absolutely impossible without registering and providing a 
scriptable COM component. While Mozilla compatible browsers can load plug-ins 
from designated folders, the Internet Explorer relies entirely on the OLE server 
and COM infrastructure, so registration is required. So, why bother about IE 
anyway? Well, it's like the No. 1 browser on the Windows platform. Without 
support for IE, most people will have even less incentive to use open-source 
IcedTea-Web.

Long story short, I came to the conclusion that it is probably best to start 
implementing Windows specific code now and to blend it with the existing Un*x 
code later.

At this stage, the plug-in does not do much, except for registering the plug-in 
with Mozilla compatible browsers and COM. However, you won't see it in the list 
of Add-ons in IE. Simply because IE requires an implemented IOleObject 
interface, which I did not come to yet. ;-) But, the plug-in does show up in 
Mozilla compatible browsers! I have been trying to test the Chrome browser too 
but to no avail. So far, I have been building and testing the 64 bit version only.

How to build

True to IcedTea's motto, you will not need any proprietary or closed source 
tools to build. However, you will need MinGW, mingw-make, XulRunner SDK (a Linux 
package works too), and OpenJDK with Windows headers. Actually, I have been 
coding in F20 entirely, and the only thing I had to pull manually were the JVM 
Windows headers, hence you should be good on almost every Linux distro.
Before building, look into the Makefile.mingw file to setup your paths or to 
find out about the make variables to set on the command line. Then invoke

mingw-make -C plugin/icedteanp/windows -f Makefile.mingw all

or for the 64 bit version

mingw-make -C plugin/icedteanp/windows -f Makefile.mingw \
PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE=AMD64 all

I have designed the make file to build on Un*x and Windows systems, although I 
have not tested building on Windows yet.

Have fun and thank you for reviewing!

Jacob
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: IcedTea-Web DLL properties.png
Type: image/png
Size: 12201 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/distro-pkg-dev/attachments/20140911/ca04fd87/IcedTea-WebDLLproperties-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: IcedTea-Web in Mozilla Nigtly x64 for Windows.png
Type: image/png
Size: 88363 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/distro-pkg-dev/attachments/20140911/ca04fd87/IcedTea-WebinMozillaNigtlyx64forWindows-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Windows plug-in.patch
Type: text/x-patch
Size: 163359 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/distro-pkg-dev/attachments/20140911/ca04fd87/Windowsplug-in-0001.patch>