Re: New User - Hello to all - some Ideas concerning Netsurf for arm

On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 13:18:04 +0200, Christian Lepper wrote:
> my Name is Christian, Im from Germany/Munich.
> i work on a embedded Plattform with Freescales iMX28 (arm).

Cool!

> Since some days i tried to get NetSurf working on this Plattform.
> And with some small changes now i have first nsfb bin which is runable ;-)

Excellent.

> Im not firm with your bugtracking systems...
> so i send my suggestions here in hope to find the right person who can
> handle this Info,
> or just stick my nose to the right place for it ;-)

Our BTS is a Mantis instance. There's some help on bugs.netsurf-browser.org
but I'll admit it is a little hard to get your head around to begin with :-)

> We use framebuffer with SDL-1.2
>
> Found Hints/Probs/Bugs in Make Process:
> 1. in $(TARGET_WORKSPACE)/netsurf/Makefile Line 140
> Change
> STRIP=strip
> To
> STRIP?=strip
> Makes it possible to use the strip from my (external) Toolchain;
> else it always uses the HOST strip which cant handle my arm compiled bin.

Interesting, this has never managed to hit us before and we cross-compile lots
of stuff. Well spotted.

> 2. My Ubuntu shell has severe Probs handling the defined funcs from env.sh
> I had to change all names from e.g. ns-package-install to ns_package_install
> I didnt figure out why my machine has a Problem with the '-' in the names..
> But changing it to '_' solved the Probs.

Which shell do you use? We have several developers who use our env.sh on
Ubuntu so we'd like to track down these issues.

> 3. Compiling Error cause of double typedef'd : typedef struct fbtk_widget_s
> fbtk_widget_t;
> In work/netsurf/framebuffer/fbtk.h and work/netsurf/framebuffer/gui.h
> I changed to this:
> ./framebuffer/gui.h:23:
> //typedef struct fbtk_widget_s fbtk_widget_t;
> ./framebuffer/gui.h:73:
> //void gui_resize(fbtk_widget_t *root, int width, int height);
> void gui_resize(struct fbtk_widget_s *root, int width, int height);
> than it compiled.

I'm afraid I'm not au-fait with fbtk, but perhaps Michael Drake can jump in
here.

> 4. Compile warning/error:
> After a make clean, first run of make gives this error:
> COMPILE: framebuffer/font_internal.c
> framebuffer/font_internal.c:33:26: warning: font-ns-sans.h: No such file or
> directory
> framebuffer/font_internal.c: In function 'fb_get_glyph':
> framebuffer/font_internal.c:263: error: 'fb_bold_italic_section_table'
> undeclared (first use in this function)
> framebuffer/font_internal.c:263: error: (Each undeclared identifier is
> reported only once
> .....
> But in second try of make this file seems to be installed... maybe some
> changes in make order/sequence?
> And maybe this will disappear in the moment i get freetype compiled and
> linked to Netsurf.

Ditto.

> Suggestions:
> - Why not use "SDL-ttf" which handles freetype fonts in a good and portable
> manner?

Font rendering for the framebuffer frontend is handled by NS separately from
the framebuffer physical layer. Adding SDL-ttf would imply making NetSurf's
codebase have SDL content. Perhaps better would be to push more of the font
rendering into libnsfb and then the option would open up.

> Questions:
> - Somebody got libmozjs running with NetSurf under arm?

libmozjs is very difficult to get going on ARM reliably (we have it working on
RISC OS (ish)). I suggest you do not attempt to build JavaScript support for
now. We're slowly evaluating other JS options which might make it easier for
us to port.

> - running nsfb gives a browser window but no website appears just left
> bottom said "BadEncoding".
> Webserver gets a "http OK" so i think the data is delivered to the
> browser.
> Doing something wrong?

If you run NetSurf with the -v option, it'll give a lot of useful messages on
stdout/stderr. Capture those into a log and we may be able to help further.

D.

--
Daniel Silverstone http://www.netsurf-browser.org/
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