I'd like the first release of WPE to be fully introspectable. To accomplish this, WPEBackends will need to become introspectable as well. This should be a fairly small amount of work once we have documentation working, and we all agree that working documentation is a release blocker. The value of delaying the release until we have introspection working is to ensure our API is actually introspectable, and avoid needless breakage down the road. It's also a major marketing point, since it will be nice to be able to use WPE from languages other than C and C++ without going through the pain of writing and maintaining bindings manually.
This would be nice to have, but it's not going to be a release blocker.
After bug #226662 now it is possible to use WPEWebKit from other languages via GObject-Introspection. As you can see in the transcript of a Python session below, things work as expected, modulo the fact that we do not currently have any WPE backend which would be itself introspectable: >>> from gi.repository import WPEJavaScriptCore as JSC <stdin>:1: PyGIWarning: WPEJavaScriptCore was imported without specifying a version first. Use gi.require_version('WPEJavaScriptCore', '1.1') before import to ensure that the right version gets loaded. >>> JSC <IntrospectionModule 'WPEJavaScriptCore' from '/home/aperez/WebKit/_wpep/lib/girepository-1.0/WPEJavaScriptCore-1.1.typelib'> >>> ctx = JSC.Context.new() >>> v = ctx.evaluate("new Date();", -1) >>> v.to_string() 'Mon Apr 04 2022 12:30:53 GMT+0300 (EEST)' >>> from gi.repository import WPEWebKit as WK <stdin>:1: PyGIWarning: WPEWebKit was imported without specifying a version first. Use gi.require_version('WPEWebKit', '1.1') before import to ensure that the right version gets loaded. >>> context = WK.WebContext.new_ephemeral() >>> context <WPEWebKit.WebContext object at 0x7fbc28475040 (WebKitWebContext at 0x55cad3a4b0f0)> >>> backend = WK.WebViewBackend.new(None, None, None) ** (process:2742041): WARNING **: 12:32:35.580: (../pygobject/gi/pygi-basictype.c:78):marshal_from_py_void: runtime check failed: (arg_cache->transfer == GI_TRANSFER_NOTHING) ** (process:2742041): CRITICAL **: 12:32:35.580: WebKitWebViewBackend* webkit_web_view_backend_new(wpe_view_backend*, GDestroyNotify, gpointer): assertion 'backend' failed Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> TypeError: constructor returned NULL
I am going to close this, either: - WPE backends add support for GObject-Inrospection themselves, or - Some GI language bindings support working with non-GI libraries, for example one can register a “foreign module” in PyGObject to add support for allow passing C types to/from GI functions. This is done in the Cairo integration, see https://pygobject.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guide/cairo_integration.html At any rate, what's remaining for being able to instantiate a WebView through GI does not need seem to belong inside WebKit. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 226662 ***