this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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I heard the same - over a decade ago.
Not disagreeing with you, although that information might be outdated. But the fact that you don't see, e.g. , applications that use gecko to embed web content, speaks volumes. I get the feeling that their codebase is very monolithic.
I would really like to hear from a current or former contributor though.
https://web.archive.org/web/20191006213746/https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Gecko/Embedding_Mozilla/FAQ/Embedding_Gecko
It seems they cancelled support for embedding gecko.
As a previously paying, licensed Opera user I believe it was one of the reasons they went with chromium. Even Vivaldi (which is the true Opera) uses chromium. Giving up PWA support is another mistake.
On the chromium side, there is the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) which is used absolutely everywhere. Not sure about gecko situation though, but at least their JavaScript engine, SpiderMonkey, also has quite widespread use. I don't think I've seen projects not related with Mozilla/Firefox that use gecko though, but perhaps it's because I never look hard enough. It's usually either WebKit or CEF.
I believe libxul is their approach to having gecko as a separate library for others to use.