Netsurf for 68k amigas, css capable web brower

[chiark]

The source is there, just waiting for you to compile it. ;-)
If it's just a question of commenting out the unused features, then it's easy, right?

That appears to be wrong, unfortunately. :-( - or at least to my very quick trip through the source it does...

There's bits of it which give me hope it might be straightforward, such as checking which version of graphics.library is returned before assuming compositing is available, but then others which worry me, such as some of the dependencies.

Having a quick look, it seems that things like libcurl (first dependency I chose) require OS4+...  So then you're into backporting all the dependencies too.

I don't know how much time it would take to port this to 3.9 or previous, but it's not a question of commenting out the bits that don't work as that would be everything.

Unfortunately my development for AmigaOS sorta stopped 16 years ago, and I wasn't doing anything nearly as complex as this.

But I would love to try to help get this ported.  I think an analysis of what is needed would be a wise first step, and then a bit of a plan...

[chiark]

Just found this when digging a bit deeper:

http://www.ppa.pl/artykul-Chris.Young.November.2008.-3_32_1169.html

Are there any chances for AmigaOS 3.X, MorphOS or AROS versions of NetSurf?

I originally started out writing the NetSurf Amiga specific code in such a way that it would work on OS3.x, if somebody had the time to port all the dependecies. That quickly went out the window when features I needed were either only available on OS4 or there was a better way of doing them on OS4. I still think it can be done, but it would require a lot more work. Certainly the speed of NetSurf is comparable to AWeb and should be ideal for the sort of hardware OS3 is running on. I have had contact from people interested in helping port to OS3 but nothing has come of it yet.

MorphOS and AROS have the additional problem of using MUI as their native UI. Somebody did contact me regarding porting NetSurf to AROS and I'll help out where I can, but if you're using MUI (or Zune or whatever) then most of the work I've done needs to be repeated again for MUI. MorphOS users may be better off sticking with Sputnik unless somebody particulary wants to put the effort in.

[chiark]

I'll take a look at the morphos codebase, but realistically I've got a huge amount to do to bring myself up to speed here. For starters, I never even used MUI... I'd be better starting off on a smaller project!

If you're interested and have some development experience, please let the world know . Of course, the luxury of time is another requirement!

Piru, do you know if Illka has considered the 3.X side of life at all when writing this?
(Just noticed his email address - my youngest son has a pikku veli t-shirt )

First problem: creating a suitable build environment...
Does anyone have any experience of building with gcc and other gnu tools on the miggy, or am I best off cross compiling?

Looks like the Amiga native option would be using Geek Gadgets, which seems to be rather moribund...

Hints?  :-)

(failing at first hurdle - amazing! )

[chiark]

COuld someone advise on the best way to set up a compilation environment - should I try cross compiling, or go native?  Either way, which toolchain is recommended?  I know DICE and a little bit of the SAS/C environment, but I don't feel that that'll do the job :-)

Any advice appreciated on this before I waste a load of time just on the build environment! :-D

[chiark]

Fantastic, thank you DJBase - just setting that up now!

[chiark]

writing a font output stub and getting it to compile would be a big step - I'll see if I can get the x-dev environment set up properly...

[chiark]

What's the best IRC channel for this sort of discussion?  

[chiark]

Why not use for 68k porting the latest snapshot here and then put all in the main CVS ?

http://www.netsurf-browser.org/downloads/source/

It contains the latest Core/OS4 development too and it seems quite stable, surely better than the MorphOS release :-)

I don't wish to sound rude, but have you read the discussion in this thread?  Back porting OS4 to OS3 is seriously non-trivial: surprisingly, porting MorphOS to OS3.X looks a lot more straightforward.