190195 - Stop using RDF for chrome manifest files

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: XUL, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Alec Flett]

So the big blocker for bug 107059 (removing RDF from embedding) is that the
chrome registry uses RDF for its manifest files, and for the chrome registry
data itself. 

The solution I see is something where we move away from using RDF at all and
move to some sort of very simple property/value (i.e. nsPersistentProperties
and/or nsManifestLineReader) format to describe a chrome package.

This is going to be a real pain though, because we have to migrate all existing
chrome, and probably at least recognize that a .jar file is old. 

The good news is that memory use will be much more efficient than using RDF,
which has to allocate all sorts of objects (nsIRDFResources and the like) and
strings just to represent a property.

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

The embed chrome registry fixed this, as did the toolkit chrome registry, in
various ways. Seamonkey still uses RDF, but that's ok.

Comment 2

[Alec Flett]

nice!