921747 - Drop --disable-webgl ?

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1052518

(Core :: Graphics: CanvasWebGL, defect)

Description

[Benoit Jacob [:bjacob] (mostly away)]

Spun off from bug 921095.

Should we still have a --disable-webgl configure option?

Last I checked, Thunderbird was building with --disable-webgl.

Comment 1

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

I believe the TorBrowser probably also builds with --disable-webgl, although if we're at all successful in bringing them back to the trunk that may be moot. As long as it can be disabled via prefs that should be good enough (does webgl.disabled cover it all?).

Comment 2

[Benoit Jacob [:bjacob] (mostly away)]

Yes, webgl.disabled=true really guarantees that WebGL is unavailable unconditionally.

Comment 3

[Kelsey Gilbert [:jgilbert]]

Does keeping this provide benefit at all? Is there maybe some dependencies which are not needed on Windows if we don't build webgl? If not, I think we should just be satisfied that the pref disables it.

Comment 4

[Kelsey Gilbert [:jgilbert]]

IIRC, Bas uses this. Maybe he has insight here?

Comment 5

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Bas uses it to avoid building ANGLE :p  Drop it, it's a core part of the web platform now.

Comment 6

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

(In reply to Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] from comment #5)
> Bas uses it to avoid building ANGLE :p  Drop it, it's a core part of the web
> platform now.

Yes. I would build with it -if- it would build without having the DirectX SDK installed. Dropping it is a silly idea right now in my opinion, requiring the installation of an SDK which is deprecated by 3 1/2 years seems bad.

Other than that I'm sure I can very easily add a hack to disable initialization of webGL, so I'm sure I'll be fine :P.

Comment 7

[Kelsey Gilbert [:jgilbert]]

(In reply to Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten) from comment #6)
> (In reply to Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] from comment #5)
> > Bas uses it to avoid building ANGLE :p  Drop it, it's a core part of the web
> > platform now.
> 
> Yes. I would build with it -if- it would build without having the DirectX
> SDK installed. Dropping it is a silly idea right now in my opinion,
> requiring the installation of an SDK which is deprecated by 3 1/2 years
> seems bad.
> 
> Other than that I'm sure I can very easily add a hack to disable
> initialization of webGL, so I'm sure I'll be fine :P.

What if we gave you a pref called 'webgl.disabled'? :)

Comment 8

[Mike Perry]

Thanks for the heads up, Dan.

Tor Browser only builds with --disable-webgl on Windows because we ran into difficulty building it with mingw-w64 (we use mingw-w64 to achieve reproducible, cross-compiled builds from Linux VMs). We will continue to need the configure switch so long as mingw-w64 remains unable to build the WebGL support for Windows from Linux. I'm not sure what the blockers are, or if there already is a solution to this problem that I'm just not aware of.

We enable WebGL on Linux and MacOS, but use NoScript to make it click-to-play (primarily for vulnerability surface reduction due to video card drivers, but also for fingerprintability reduction).

Comment 9

[Kelsey Gilbert [:jgilbert]]

(In reply to Mike Perry from comment #8)
> Thanks for the heads up, Dan.
> 
> Tor Browser only builds with --disable-webgl on Windows because we ran into
> difficulty building it with mingw-w64 (we use mingw-w64 to achieve
> reproducible, cross-compiled builds from Linux VMs). We will continue to
> need the configure switch so long as mingw-w64 remains unable to build the
> WebGL support for Windows from Linux. I'm not sure what the blockers are, or
> if there already is a solution to this problem that I'm just not aware of.
> 
> We enable WebGL on Linux and MacOS, but use NoScript to make it
> click-to-play (primarily for vulnerability surface reduction due to video
> card drivers, but also for fingerprintability reduction).

We'd really like to remove this. Could we trouble you guys to file any build bugs WRT building with WebGL?

Comment 10

[(no longer active)]

--disable-webgl was dropped in bug 1052518.