[webkit-dev] WebKit and Android

Hello WebKit! We would like to give an update about WebKit on Android. A while ago, we started the effort to upstream the Android port of WebKit. For a variety of reasons, this work took longer than anticipated and was never finished. We realize that the incomplete Android port that exists today in WebKit ToT has caused quite a bit of confusion and inconvenience to the project as a whole and we are very sorry for that. Over time, the Android Browser has come to share more and more code with Chrome (both WebKit and Chromium). This approach has a number of advantages for the WebKit community: 1. Android WebKit no longer requires a separate build system because we are able to reuse Chromium’s gyp system for building. 2. Android no longer requires a separate set of WebCore clients, platform abstractions, and embedder APIs because Android shares much of this code with the Chromium port. 3. The Android layout tests results more closely match chromium-linux and more expected results can be shared. We plan to start by setting up a webkit.org build bot that will compile Chromium’s DRT for Android using the Android NDK, SDK and toolchain. We anticipate a reasonably small set of changes to the Chromium port to achieve this. We’re fully committed to maintaining this new flavor of the Chromium port of WebKit and having a build bot up and running as soon as possible will make this an easier task. At the same time, we will be removing the existing incomplete Android port. This includes the Android-specific code in WebCore/platform/android, as well as any code guarded by the PLATFORM(ANDROID) macro. We’re looking forward to a much better collaboration with the WebKit community and we’d be very grateful to receive any feedback on this plan. Thanks, Andrei, Steve, Ben