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

[Mattias Eliasson]

Hi!

I have previously discussed using FireBreath as a plugin abstraction layer for icedtea-web. It provides a C++ abstraction layer on top of both NPAPI and IE:s COM/OLE/ActiveX plugin API. I argued that it would make icedtea-web cleaner by hiding all the NPAPI stuff, but it's oven more valid in this use case.

As you are planning to use add the IE API you should consider using FireBreath instead, and hopefully it will also solve your NPAPI worries. You do not implement a IOleObject interface with FB, it generates one for you.

I totally agree with you on the need for a Windows/IE plugin and I wish I had the time to work on this myself.

//Mattias

Den 2014-09-11 03:38, Jacob Wisor skrev:
> 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