[Brad]

In case you don't follow Dave Hyatt's blog, here's some big news for you Safari users! The Apple Safari developer team already has been providing the source for WebCore and JavaScriptCore for others to use, but they've only been available in point updates after each major Safari upgrade. Developers like The Omni Group who roll special implementations of it have had to wait around for Apple to release these updates so they could in turn get to work at processing and using them.

They (and you) must wait no longer!

The Safari team has decided to go a step farther, now, and has implemented a CVS for WebKit, WebCore, and JavaScriptCore! For developers, that means getting access to goodies before they're officially released and it also means contributing fixes and immediately seeing the results. For end users, that means you can essentially have the future versions of Safari today.

From Hyatt's blog:

As some of you have already noticed (those of you that built), the new WebKit not only passes Acid2, but it's also substantially faster at loading Web pages and at handling JavaScript. It contains a number of additional performance improvements that went in post-Tiger.

I can confirm this, as I just rolled my own copy from the CVS and am using it now.

How do you do it? Well, you need Apple's developer tools installed first. You can install from your OS X Install discs or you can download from connect.apple.com (after joining with a free ADC account). Then, hit webkit.opendarwin.org for instructions. Read and follow the instructions very carefully.

You can either run a specific instance of Safari with the new code (recommended) or you can replace the system frameworks with your own builds (AT YOUR OWN RISK).

[thegelding]

or a simpleton like me, is it worth the time and effort, or should i stick with the safari i got running with 10.4.1??

g

[morningstarrising]

So what you going to do with this?

I'm not touching this, cuz if I did, i'd be the first OS X Mac to be infected with a virus..lol

[Brad]

It's probably not worth the time and effort, G.

Originally Posted by morningstarrising So what you going to do with this? I'm not touching this, cuz if I did, i'd be the first OS X Mac to be infected with a virus..lol

Huh?

[torifile]

Just for the sheer geekiness of it, I downloaded the source and I'm getting an error in the webkit build. I'm redownloading now. Maybe I screwed that up...

Unsuccessful open on filename containing newline at /Users/sbanawan/Webkit/WebKitTools/Scripts/webkitdirs.pm line 91.

The line causing the error is:

    open CONFIGURATION, "$baseProductDir/Configuration" or die;

Any ideas?

[staph]

Originally Posted by torifile Just for the sheer geekiness of it, I downloaded the source and I'm getting an error in the webkit build. I'm redownloading now. Maybe I screwed that up... Unsuccessful open on filename containing newline at /Users/sbanawan/Webkit/WebKitTools/Scripts/webkitdirs.pm line 91. The line causing the error is: open CONFIGURATION, "$baseProductDir/Configuration" or die; Any ideas?

What is $baseProductDir defined as?

You could always work out where the Config dir actually is and replace the variable with an absolute path.

Edit: filename containing newline? Bizarre! Are there spaces in the path to the build directory?

[torifile]

Originally Posted by staph What is $baseProductDir defined as? You could always work out where the Config dir actually is and replace the variable with an absolute path. Edit: filename containing newline? Bizarre! Are there spaces in the path to the build directory?

Don't know what $basProductDir is defined as. I didn't define it. All I did was copy and paste the build command. There are no spaces in the target directory name (at least there aren't if the directory isn't defined with a space; the path to the directory I'm in is Yoshi/Users/sbanawan/webkit).

[staph]

Originally Posted by torifile Don't know what $basProductDir is defined as. I didn't define it.

Somewhere else in the code should be a line with something along the lines of

$baseProductDir = "/path/to/webkit";

or

GetOptions (      baseProductDir => \$baseProductDir);

or something like that. Just have a look for other occurences of the variable name somewhere before line 91.

Is there a file called Configuration in your webkit folder, or one of the folders under it? If you can find the actual file, you can replace the filename ("$baseProductDir/Configuration") in line 91 with the full path, and it would hopefully Just Work™.

[torifile]

Very strange and maybe related to my errors: when I started up poisoned tonight, I kept getting permissions errors. Something about not being able to create a folder or something. I did a repair permissions but that didn't seem to fix it (and I deleted all prefs and everything....) I wonder what the problem is...

[Brad]

My advice regarding Safari: trash everything you pulled and start over with the instructions from scratch.

[torifile]

I did that twice. I just restarted and my poisoned problem disappeared. Lemme see if my safari one did too.

Well, no go still.... Should I be putting this in a specific directory? Right now, I'm downloading to a directory in my home directory.

edit: what the hell. Now it's working... I just checked everything out into my home directory. I hope it wasn't the restart that fixed it. That's just too windows-esque.

[torifile]

Ok. It's built. I ran it with WebKitTools/Scripts/run-safari but it seems the same. Even the build number is the same (412). Am I missing something?

[Brad]

Safari, the application, is exactly the same.
WebKit, the engine that powers Safari, is what's new.

One sure-fire way to see some changes?

The Acid2 Test.

Look at it with your specially-launched Safari (using the script in Terminal) and you should see a nice smiley. Quit it, launch Safari normally, and try again and you'll see a page with lots of rendering errors (after seeing a weird file download). That's one indication of the bugs that the newer WebKit fixes.

Also, I've found scrolling with two-fingers to be much smoother and faster with the new WebKit. Heck, I've even modified the script to open a Adium with the custom WebKit.

[darshu]

Originally Posted by torifile Just for the sheer geekiness of it, I downloaded the source and I'm getting an error in the webkit build. I'm redownloading now. Maybe I screwed that up... Unsuccessful open on filename containing newline at /Users/sbanawan/Webkit/WebKitTools/Scripts/webkitdirs.pm line 91. The line causing the error is: open CONFIGURATION, "$baseProductDir/Configuration" or die; Any ideas?

That was a bug one of the devs checked in, they fixed it later. The fun of working on a live CVS tree

[Brad]

Yeah, that's why just starting over can mysteriously fix it so easily.

Remember that this whole thing is a "use at your own risk" project.

[IonYz]

Does it feel snappier?

I'd like some new CSS stuff to play with though. Maybe rounded anti-aliased borders or some really neat CSS3 stuff. Deer Park has a dozen or so neat things to play with.

And why is this page so wide. Code blocks should overflow to scroll.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by IonYz And why is this page so wide. Code blocks should overflow to scroll.

Believe me when I say it's not nearly as easy as you suggest. The PRE forces out the width and because everything is wrapped in table cells, the cells stretch out infinitely. I actually have fixed this on the test server by abolishing nearly all tables, but it breaks like hell in Internet Explorer.

[CobaltFire]

To be honest (and I am a big IE user since that's all I have at work), break IE to make it run on Safari better. I'm sure the IE users (10% was the last figure I heard) will deal. Anyhow, interesting stuff on that Safari thing, I may have to play with that.

EDIT: It figures that the first thread I open after I post this would screw up royally. I have a pic (kinda interesting formatting...) but can't figure out how to post it.

[nassau]

maybe i'm i misunderstanding the whole thing here, but this page is wide as hell in safari (1.3) too...

[Brad]

Better?

Hint: when you use the CODE tag, it respects all whitespace. Therefore, it never gives a carriage return until you put it in there. I just changed the problematic CODE tags in the above posts to QUOTE tags.

[torifile]

Originally Posted by Brad Better? Hint: when you use the CODE tag, it respects all whitespace. Therefore, it never gives a carriage return until you put it in there. I just changed the problematic CODE tags in the above posts to QUOTE tags.

Sorry. That was me, I think.

[Brad]

No sweat, T.

Though, this southern summer heat makes me want to reach for an iced tea.

[EmC]

Wow, this is a lot faster. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Purgatory]

I don't notice much in terms of speed, but Safari ignores the fact that I set my Kensington PilotMouse Optical Pro's scroll wheel to super fast unless I use this CVS thingy, so I'm in.

[Kyros]

Just out of curiosity, how soon would one expect to see a Safari 2.1 or something similar? Or does this project have nothing/little to do with that?

[Brad]

This project probably has very little bearing on when Apple will make an official release for Safari. Safari had made strides LONG before Apple actually released 1.3 and 2.0; so, that's a good sign that the release dates are guided moreso by politics than technical achievments.

On a related note, this project has a new blog on the .org page that Hyatt and company will be updating with relevant details:
http://webkit.opendarwin.org/blog/

[_Ω_]

Any one using NightShift ?

NightShift automatically downloads and updates WebKit, the Safari HTML rendering engine, to the latest nightly version. No user intervention is required, everything is fully automated. * Downloads WebKit nightly build from web server * Mounts the disk image * Creates a backup of the previous version on disk * Copies the new nightly build to its default location * Launches the new version of WebKit * Option to undo latest install and revert to last version * Option to show the change log for past week

[staph]

I am now. It seems to work rather well.

[Bill M]

Thanks for the tip, Omega. I just tried NightShift and it works just right. It is quite automated and certainly beats one having to build it; better leave that to the Pros like Brad and Co.

To anyone who will give it a shot, don't forget that you should launch the "webkit" app which will be installed in your Applications folder, instead of your regular Safari. It will show as a purple/gold Safari icon in the Dock. This "new" Safari thingie is indeed quite faster and renders complex websites much better IMHO.

[_Ω_]

Just so everyone knows I am NOT using it. I just stumbled across it and thought of this thread.