Jump to content

My Browser Builds (Part 1)


Recommended Posts

4 hours ago, NM-Newbie said:

don't know who "Matt Tobin" is

... Then get yourself educated! :angry:

4 hours ago, roytam1 said:

DON'T CARE WHO MATT TOBIN IS !!!

... and there's no need to "scream" with bold capitals :realmad::thumbdown

In fact, you should care who that person is: He's the "right hand", so to speak - no insult intended to left-handed people ;) , of Moonchild himself, an integral part of Moonchild Productions, the dev team behind the UXP platform and all the applications built on it: Pale Moon 28 [New Moon 28.x.xa1], Basilisk 52 [Serpent 52.9.0] and Matt A. Tobin's most recent offerings, Interlink [Mail News] and Borealis Navigator [BorealisXP]...

Matt A. Tobin contributes a lot of code to the UXP repo, all this code will end up virtually unchanged inside @roytam1's XP/Vista compatible forks... He's infamous for harbouring a strong aversion to Windows XP (and Windows Vista) and being generally extremely hostile to fans/users of these OSes; and make no mistake: he'll go the extra mile to make sure his code is NOT compatible with said OSes, making Roy's hard work even harder :(...

So yes, the subject of "Matt Tobin" is sort of relevant to this thread...

4 hours ago, NM-Newbie said:

"this is how roytam wants it, it's free, you should accept roytam's release as-is", then let's be honest, how is that any different from whoever this "Matt Tobin" guy saying the same exact thing, "this is the way that I want it, i don't care if it is native or not"  ???  ???  ???

It seems my previous detailed reply to you has fallen onto deaf ears (or shut eyes, to be precise...); Roytam's task is not to rewrite the Pale Moon code committed by the Moonchild Productions team to accommodate a specific user's personal needs, he has only reverted those bits of code that prevent it from compiling and successfully running on XP+Vista OSes, period...

Had you bothered to check my link to UPX PR #874, you would have noticed that Matt A. Tobin had nothing to do with the "tab-audio-indicator" code that you're implying and you feel strongly vexed about; this PR was submitted by @FranklinDM, another dev in their team...

We haven't yet witnessed in this thread other NM28 users complaining about the issue affecting your setup(s), so, as of now, it appears to be only manifesting itself on your systems; worse yet, you haven't produced a list of system specifics and detailed reproduction steps so as to facilitate troubleshooting of your issue... 

Moonchild code targets "recent" Oses (Win7+) and "recent" hardware (e.g. SSE2+ capable CPU), so if your system is under-resourced it would not run NM28 properly...

In closing, if "rebuild NM28 without the new feature" is what you actually want, then, again, I have provided the links for that:

1. Clone the UXP repo

2. Revert PR #874 commits

3. Apply latest UXP patch by Roytam1

4. Provided you have a suitable building environment set up (Win7SP1+ 64-bit with 12+GB RAM, Visual Studio 2015+,etc. ), build from modified source; I am certain that @roytam1 would be willing to guide you through, that is if his spare time permits him to...

So, no more moaning on your side, please... :huh:

Edited by VistaLover
Link to comment
Share on other sites


you are quite the expert at long-winded explanations that yeah, you caught me, i seldom have the time to read all the way through, lol

 

i'll just stick with the "last" 28.1.0 and consider "my" browsing needs do not need/require anything that 28.2.0+ has to offer  --  problem solved, we can both "move on" now  :worship:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/4/2018 at 5:19 AM, VistaLover said:
On 12/3/2018 at 10:26 PM, Tamris said:

can't upgrade to 28.3, since for whatever reason, it simply keeps crashing upon start.

Can't comment on this, as I still haven't upgraded to it (Vista Home Premium SP2 x86 here.) Will probably do so tomorrow and let you know how it went :rolleyes:.

... Well, the upgrade to the latest version of New Moon 28 [v28.3.0a1 (32-bit) (2018-11-30), buildID=20181130230404] on my Vista SP2 laptop was problem-free; here's a screengrab running a new/clean test profile:

0oOeRgu.jpg

I then loaded my current (dirty) profile, no issues at all :thumbup I understand this might not be actually helpful for you :dubbio:, at least it proves it's not a generalised problem for Vista users... ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, NM-Newbie said:

you are quite the expert at long-winded explanations that yeah, you caught me, i seldom have the time to read all the way through, lol

 

i'll just stick with the "last" 28.1.0 and consider "my" browsing needs do not need/require anything that 28.2.0+ has to offer  --  problem solved, we can both "move on" now  :worship:

Holy Crap!  VistaLover welcomed you and helped the best he could.  Sometimes, long-winded explanations are necessary so that all of the details can be examined and known about.  He wants to arm you with info.

**** IMPORTANT ****

As for all the rest of you that called me an anti-XP troll - Now do you see the difference?  I never told anyone they were long-winded, insulted them, or told them TL:DR.  Sure I disagreed, but I wasn't trying to poke bees nests.  I've refrained from my anti-XP "discussions" (which isn't cause for celebration - since it hinders open communication), but maybe next time, you'll remember what I just said. I'm still upset (not in a sucky way) that I was thought of as a troll, since I've also helped others on occasion.  No one should ever have tow a "company line" when it comes to an open forum.  But the disagreeable behaviour above is the type of thing that really should set you all off.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, VistaLover said:

..Matt A. Tobin contributes a lot of code to the UXP repo, all this code will end up virtually unchanged inside @roytam1's XP/Vista compatible forks... He's infamous for harbouring a strong aversion to Windows XP (and Windows Vista) and being generally extremely hostile to fans/users of these OSes; and make no mistake: he'll go the extra mile to make sure his code is NOT compatible with said OSes, making Roy's hard work even harder :(...

So yes, the subject of "Matt Tobin" is sort of relevant to this thread...

@roytam1

Do you really think he actually goes to the trouble to absolutely ensure his apps won't run on XP or Vista?  I know his personality seems to suggest so.  But do you think his aversion is that intense?

Sure, we all know my present-day stance on XP, but I think it's amazing what Roytam1 has been able to get running

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Jody Thornton said:

Do you really think he actually goes to the trouble to absolutely ensure his apps won't run on XP or Vista?  I know his personality seems to suggest so.  But do you think his aversion is that intense?

I'm far from sure about that. He sure wants us out of his forum, but I'm quite OK with that. I'd not like having him here either. But I doubt he'd go the extra lenght of actually inserting code to actually prevent his browsers from running on either Vista or XP. He's taken out code intended to enable that, because he sees it as bloat, of course. But adding code to forestall XP/Vista use would be adding bloat, which contradicts his slim-and-mean optimized code philosophy, IMO. Now, if people, like @Dibya, keeps on nagging him, that might change...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/29/2018 at 1:42 AM, roytam1 said:

a trial build is created. (it builds, it starts in XP, others are untested)

binary: https://o.rths.cf/mailnews-uxp/mailnews-20181129-6d703f2-uxp-b37e8f87c-xpmod.7z

source patch (excluding UXP): https://o.rths.cf/mailnews-uxp/interlink-src-xpmod-20181129.7z

Here is the latest one:
https://o.rths.cf/boc-uxp/mailnews.win32-20181201-9c5ff06-uxp-d7bb17571-xpmod.7z

Thanks again roytam1.  I'm going to test it now.

 

Edited by mockingbird
found it!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@mockingbird Thanks :), but it was already posted by roytam1 himself, last Saturday I believe ;):

On 12/1/2018 at 5:43 AM, roytam1 said:
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, dencorso said:

He's taken out code intended to enable that

That's pretty much what I hinted about, thanks dencorso :thumbup; if the original code he forked contained, by default, parts that would enable it to compile and run on XP/Vista, he would meticulously excise those parts to make sure his fork is not compatible with said (older) OSes; you said he considers those parts as bloat (which can be indeed the case, but who really knows what's inside that person's head? :rolleyes:), I merely emphasised the result of him removing that "bloat":

On 12/5/2018 at 4:51 PM, VistaLover said:

to make sure his code is NOT compatible with said OSes

Another aspect which isn't clear in my previous comment is build-time-compiler-optimizations: targeting strictly Win7+ kernel when building his forked code, so that the officially released binaries be non-executable on XP/Vista... :angry:

Moonchild et co. have a precedent on that: When they were releasing (between Nov 2017 and Mar 2018) official binaries of Basilisk 55 (on their now deprecated moebius platform), compiler opts were such that a simple lowering of the subsystem version string (from 6.1 to 6.0) in the EXE's headers would enable the Basilisk.exe binary to run on Vista (with only few flaws, namely disabled WMF features...).

When apps (Basilisk 52 and Pale Moon 28) on the UXP platform started being officially released, the binaries were built under revised compiler optimisations; previous "hack" wouldn't now work, because at least 8 (new) API function calls were introduced in various app DLLs/EXEs that are not present inside Vista's versions of important system DLLs (kernel32.dll, user32.dll, psapi.dll etc)... If you ask me, that was not a coincidence :whistle:

As for adding code to their tree that is knowingly WinXP incompatible, the Moonchild team has already done that by switching over their ffvpx library to using FFmpeg 4.0+ source; to be fair though, it's safe to assume they didn't do it out of spite for eventual XP users on forks; they simply just don't support XP or Vista, so these OSes have been totally left out from any coding considerations on their part... :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, VistaLover said:

When apps (Basilisk 52 and Pale Moon 28) on the UXP platform started being officially released, the binaries were built under revised compiler optimizations; previous "hack" wouldn't now work, because at least 8 (new) API function calls were introduced in various app DLLs/EXEs that are not present inside Vista's versions of important system DLLs

It's often hard to judge intent, but @VistaLover makes a good case. Those apps were forked from FF 52, which did target XP/Vista.

I could see adding code that wasn't compatible with those OSes, like FFmpeg 4.0, and I could even see removing code that enabled compatibility with those OSes, without deliberate ill intent; the goal could be to add features, improve performance, address obscure bugs (like the 7-week browser session limit) or even reduce the size of the final product, and losing XP/Vista compatibility was just the cost of achieving those goals. But do those "revised compiler optimizations" really improve performance and/or reduce code size enough for anyone to notice? Or do they just break XP/Vista compatibility for the sake of breaking XP/Vista compatibility?

Luckily, since these are all open source, it's possible to recompile with compiler settings targeting XP/Vista. Dealing with the other issues is harder and is probably the bulk of @roytam1's work. But the compiler settings probably speak to intent more clearly than the other changes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let's not forget an earlier patch that checked for POSReady2009 XP registry key and prevented browser startup.
The git commit for it had rather a vague title.
Their logic here was that POSReady2009 had sufficient differences from vanilla XP, that it warranted extra support issues.

The decision for this block was reversed eventually, at the community's pleas.
They said that if any POSReady2009/"XP SP4" patch user made bug report pretending to be vanilla XP, they would outright cancel this compatibility.

Then came newer PaleMoon for Vista+
 

The end.

PaleMoon_fix.PNG

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/7/2018 at 3:04 AM, 404notfound said:

Let's not forget an earlier patch that checked for POSReady2009 XP registry key and prevented browser startup.
The git commit for it had rather a vague title.

Found it:

Update application startup with proper error messages. (28 Jul 2015)

Reverted 6 months later in

Remove POSReady sanity check. (28 Jan 2016)

... with a more transparent commit title... ;)

Edited by VistaLover
Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, Jody Thornton said:

Sure, we all know my present-day stance on XP, but I think it's amazing what Roytam1 has been able to get running

Not all of us, this is a long thread and I haven't run into any posts of your stance on XP, could you summarize? I still enjoy working W2k that blackwingcat kept going for so many years because like XP it's simple, fast and easy to use.

The only complaint is that I'm unable to get video hardware acceleration going with any browser in either XP or W2k, including Firefox or Basilisk 52 probably because the drivers are blacklisted. In Windows 7 that works great. 

Edited by DanR20
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...