For the WPE port the inspector resources are bundled using for loading with GResource, built into an shared library which contains the bundled data, and finally loaded on-demand using GModule (which ends up using “dlopen”) when first needed. There are no other contents in the shared library, so we could as well generate a “*.gresource” data file instead (which is a GVDB file), and load it using “g_resource_load” (instead of using GModule). There are a few small advantages: - Disk space savings. GDVB files are slightly more compact than a shared library, and are mmap'd when loaded. - Loading the data does not involve the dynamic linker (no need for parsing an executable object, resolving symbols, etc.). - No intermediate build steps: the XML manifest gets built into the .gresource data file directly (compare with the current approach, which is: XML manifest → C source → object file → shared library). While there's nothing particularly important in the list above, it still would be nicer to use a data file instead of a shared library for the inspector resources.
FWIW, the .gresource files being data, I understand the file would be installed into “${DATADIR}/wpe-webkit-${VERSION}” instead of “${LIBDIR}/wpe-webkit-${VERSION}” (as currently done).