Re: [Lynx-dev] using fresher libwww?

[Thomas Dickey]

On Mon, 2 Jul 2007, Mikhail T. wrote:

> Thomas Dickey wrote:
> > On Mon, 2 Jul 2007, Mikhail T. wrote:
> >
> > > Hello!
> > >
> > > It appears, lynx is using its own bundled version of libwww. The bundled 
> > > version is rather old, and a much newer one is available from 
> > > http://www.w3.org/Library/ . Its most recent version is 5.4.0, and was 
> > > released in 2002. Quite stable, and can not be dismissed as a "moving 
> > > target".
> > yes/no.  lynx uses a heavily modified version of libwww from around 1996.
> > To use a more recent version would involve a lot of work to determine which 
> > of those modifications should be moved into a newer version (as
> > well as whatever concerns about interface changes).
> Well, the W3 consortium have tried to give the library away to "open-source 
> developers" since 2002. If the Lynx project are the most active users of the 
> software, maybe, you should take it over, merge your changes in, and release 
> independently? I'm sure, your -- actively developed -- branch could be useful 
> for other projects...

I probably don't have time (recall that I maintain several programs).

But to show what you're asking, I did did a quick diff between the two, 
and see that the newer libwww is essentially unrelated to the older 
(except superficially).

The new code is about 87kloc:

 87457 21501?+>  total lines/statements

while the old is more than 2/3 that:

 59934 18202?*>  total lines/statements

and the _change_ from old/to is 80kloc's:

 269 files changed, 80637 insertions(+), 39586 deletions(-)

(that's after indenting the new code to the same scheme, etc).

On a merge of that type, progress doesn't go fast - figure about a years's 
work (for one person, working full time).

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net