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Here are some tips to ease your introduction to Epiphany development.
# Building the Code
Epiphany often requires an unstable development release of WebKit to build
successfully. If you're not sure how to handle this, refer to the
[development wiki page](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web/Development) for
suggestions.
# Code Style
In order to keep the code nice and clean we have a few requirements you'll
need to stick to in order to get your patch accepted:
* Use 2-space no-tabs for indentation.
* Use K&R style for the braces.
* No braces for one line control clauses except when another clause in the
chain contains more than one line.
* Callback functions have a suffix _cb.
* All files have to be encoded in UTF-8.
* Use `char`/`int`/`double`/…, not `gchar`/`gint`/`gdouble`/… types.
* All implementation files must include first `"config.h"`, followed by
the primary header, followed by a blank line, followed by all the
local headers sorted alphabetically, followed by a blank line,
followed by all the system headers sorted alphabetically. Headers
should follow the same pattern excluding the config.h and
self file section, for obvious reasons.
* Make comments full sentences. This means proper capitalization and
punctuation.
* `data/kr-gnome-indent.cfg` is provided as a reference config file for the
uncrustify program to get correct indentation in new files.
* There's no space between a type cast and the variable name: Right:
`(int *)foo`. Wrong: `(int*) foo`.
* Avoid explicit comparisons against TRUE, FALSE, and NULL. Right:
`if (!condition)`, `if (!pointer)`, `if (integer == 0)`. Wrong:
`if (condition == FALSE)`, `if (pointer == NULL)`, `if (!integer)`.
# Code Structure
## Layering
The code is currently structured into layers, where higher-level layers have
full access to lower-level layers, but lower-level layers have no access to the
higher layers except via delegate objects. (See `EphyEmbedContainer` for an
example of a delegate interface that allows `embed/` limited access to
`EphyWindow`, even though `EphyWindow` is in `src/`.) The levels are:
* `src/`, the highest layer, mostly GUI stuff
* `lib/widgets/`. FIXME: very confusing, this layering should be fixed
* `embed/`, stuff relating to the web view
* `lib/` lowest layer, helper classes that don't need higher-level stuff
The build system enforces that higher-level layers are not in the include path
of lower-level layers, so you should not be able to break the layering unless
you go out of your way to do so.
## GtkApplication and EphyShell
Epiphany has one singleton `EphyShell` object. Its inheritance hierarchy is:
```
- GApplication
--- GtkApplication
----- EphyEmbedShell
------- EphyShell
```
There is exactly one instance of `EphyShell`, and it is also both the
`EphyEmbedShell` and the `GtkApplication`. Use normal GObject casts to get a
pointer to the type you need.
`EphyShell` is a singleton object where we put all our global state, so it's
kind of like having a global variable, but more organized. You can access it
from anywhere in `src/` using `ephy_shell_get_default()`.
`EphyEmbedShell` is a separate class from `EphyShell` for layering purposes. It
is accessible anywhere from `embed/` or `src/`. So if you have global stuff
that you need to access from `embed/`, you need to put it in `EphyEmbedShell`,
not `EphyShell`.
## Important Epiphany Objects
`EphyWindow` is a subclass of `GtkApplicationWindow`, which is a subclass of
`GtkWindow`. It's the window. You can have any number of windows open at a time.
`EphyWindow` contains (a) an `EphyHeaderBar` (subclass of `GtkHeaderBar`), and
(b) an `EphyNotebook` (subclass of `GtkNotebook`). `EphyNotebook` contains one
or more tabs, and each tab is an `EphyEmbed`. That's worth repeating: an
`EphyEmbed` corresponds to one browser tab. Each `EphyEmbed` contains an
`EphyWebView` (subclass of `WebKitWebView`). This is the object that actually
displays the web page, where all the web browser magic happens.
## Important WebKitGTK Objects
WebKitGTK is a WebKit port that provides a GTK API wrapper around WebKit.
WebKit is really nice. It encapsulates 95% of the complexity of building a web
browser, like the JavaScript engine, HTML layout engine, and actually rendering
the webpage. Epiphany only has to deal with the remaining 5%. The most important
WebKitGTK objects are:
* `WebKitWebView` (superclass of `EphyWebView`). Displays the web.
* `WebKitWebContext`, a global object that manages shared state among web views.
Epiphany has one `EphyWebView` per browser tab. It has exactly one
`WebKitWebContext`, stored by `EphyEmbedShell`. WARNING: you need to be careful
to use the web context from `EphyEmbedShell` when using a WebKit API that
expects a `WebKitWebContext`. Do not use WebKit's default `WebKitWebContext`;
that is, do not pass `NULL` to any `WebKitWebContext *` parameter, and do not
use `webkit_web_context_get_default()`.
There is separate documentation for the [main WebKitGTK API](https://webkitgtk.org/reference/webkit2gtk/unstable/index.html),
for the [WebKitGTK DOM API](https://webkitgtk.org/reference/webkitdomgtk/unstable/index.html),
and for the [WebKitGTK JavaScriptCore API](https://webkitgtk.org/reference/jsc-glib/unstable/index.html).
## Modern WebKit Process Architecture
Modern WebKit (formerly WebKit2) has a multiprocess architecture to improve the
robustness of the browser. The UI process (the main epiphany process) runs
several subprocesses:
* Any number of WebKitWebProcesses, which handle rendering web content
* One WebKitNetworkProcess, which handles network requests, storage, etc.
In WebKitGTK, by default each WebKitWebView shares the same WebKitWebProcess.
This can reduce overall resource usage, but it results in a less-stable browser
as a crash in one tab will crash all other tabs, and the effects of memory leaks
are greatly amplified. So Epiphany runs a separate WebKitWebProcess for each
browser tab. (This is almost true. Sometimes a tab will create another tab using
JavaScript. In such cases, the web views are "related" and share the same
WebKitWebProcess.) There is a GSettings option to switch back to single-process
mode if required, but we do not claim to support this!
Epiphany uses GtkApplication to ensure uniqueness, so you usually only have one
UI process running at a time. An exception is if you use incognito mode, or
private profile mode (which is only available from the command line). In such
cases, there is no shared state with the main Epiphany browser process.
## Epiphany Web Extension
For some Epiphany features, we need to run code in the web process. This code is
called the "web extension" and lives in `embed/web-extension/`. It is compiled
into a shared library `libephywebextension.so` and installed in `$(pkglibdir)`
(e.g. `/usr/lib64/epiphany`). `EphyEmbedShell` tells WebKit to look for web
extensions in that location using `webkit_web_context_set_web_extensions_directory()`,
starts a private D-Bus server (a D-Bus server that is completely separate from
the shared system and session busses), and advertises the address of its D-Bus
server to the web extension by passing it in a `GVariant` parameter to
`webkit_web_context_set_web_extensions_initialization_user_data()`. Now the
Epiphany UI process and web extension can communicate back and forth via D-Bus.
`EphyWebExtensionProxy` encapsulates this IPC in the UI process;
`EphyEmbedShell` uses it to communicate with the web process.
Epiphany uses script message handlers as an additional form of IPC besides
D-Bus. This allows the web extension to send a `WebKitJavascriptResult` directly
to the UI process, which is received in `EphyEmbedShell`. This should generally
be used rather than D-Bus when you need to send a message from the web process
to the UI process.
# Debugging
To enable debugging use the configure option `-Ddeveloper_mode=true`.
## Logging
At execution time, you must enable the log service. To enable the
log service, set the environment variable `EPHY_LOG_MODULES`, which has the
form: `<moduleName>[:<moduleName>]*`, where `moduleName` is a filename. E.g.
`export EPHY_LOG_MODULES=ephy-window.c:ephy-autocompletion.c`. The special log
module `all` enables all log modules.
Use the `LOG()` macro to put debug messages in the code.
## Warnings
At execution time, you must enable the service. To enable you to debug
warnings, set the environment variable `EPHY_DEBUG_BREAK`.
Possible value for `EPHY_DEBUG_BREAK` variable:
```
stack Prints a stack trace.
suspend Use this to stop execution when a warning occurs.
You can then attach a debugger to the process.
trap Use this while running epiphany in a debugger.
This makes execution stop and gives back control to
the debugger.
```
## Profiling
At execution time, you must enable the profiling service. To enable the
profiling service, set the environment variable `EPHY_PROFILING_MODULES`,
which has the form `<moduleName>[:<moduleName>]*`, where `moduleName` is a
filename. E.g. `export EPHY_PROFILE_MODULES=ephy-window.c:ephy-autocompletion.c`.
The special profiling module `all` enables all profiling modules.
Use `START_PROFILER STOP_PROFILER` macros to profile pieces of code.
## valgrind
To use valgrind, you must use environment variables to disable WebKit's sandbox
and JavaScriptCore's Gigacage:
```
WEBKIT_FORCE_SANDBOX=0 GIGACAGE_ENABLED=0 G_SLICE=always-malloc Malloc=1 valgrind --track-origins=yes --leak-check=full epiphany
```
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