The current JPEG XL decoder in #Firefox apparently consists more than 100,000 lines of multi-threaded C++
The current JPEG XL decoder in #Firefox apparently consists more than 100,000 lines of multi-threaded C++
For just decoding an image format.
Not sure what it says about the format, the implementation and the Internet at large.
@bagder@mastodon.social To put in perspective:
@bagder@mastodon.social That sounds like an atrocity. But if it shows ads faster...uhm...nevermind.😌
@bagder@mastodon.social or about C++ and the state of coding and programming language tooling...
@bagder (i will keep banging the drums that most of the FOSS "supply chain" fear could be handled by investing more in programming language tooling, as Rust demonstrate, and that it would be a small overall cost for massive pay off...)
@Di4na possibly: I believe Rust is generally a good thing for most things, but I believe the Rust ecosystem with cargo and bazillions of always-updatiing tiny dependencies risk adding friction and at least complicates the equation quite a lot
@bagder@mastodon.social I can rewrite the JPEG-XL decoder it in a three day weekend 😅.
@bagder We had 100kloc C++ in a smart radiator valve that saved a bunch of extra energy.
I think it is just a reflection that extracting efficiency requires complexity.
@bagder I think it is a bit misleading (and arguably unfair) to attribute this to Firefox specifically: this is the reference jpeg-xl implementation, originally created and maintained by Google, and in widespread experimental use across all kinds of browsers, including Chromium, Safari, Edge and more
@bagder@mastodon.social I wonder if it's turing complete... something something Pegasus 0-click iMessage exploit.
@bagder@mastodon.social yeah, kinda puts into perspective all the 'negative feedback' the Chrome team received for removing JPEG-XL support. I wouldn't want to have such a monstrosity in my code base either, no matter what advantages the actual encoding might have over existing formats.
@bagder@mastodon.social To be clear, this is just the reference implementation at https://github.com/libjxl/libjxl
@freddy ... and that happens to be the one Firefox uses...
@bagder@mastodon.social Well, it seems that your point is "Firefox consists of bad code", whereas I believe that the conclusion from the post should be "The library is bad code, which is why we are not using it in production. We'd be happy to look at their rust implementation, when it's possible"
(footnote: "bad code" being an abbreviation of "100k multi-threaded C++")
@bagder@mastodon.social @freddy
and "uses" in this case means "has it available behind a feature flag in their nightly builds, and does not ship it to normal users because of this very issue"
@bagder@mastodon.social 100K? That's absurd
@bagder@mastodon.social It’s what I wondered when I saw https://jxl-art.surma.technology/ and https://jpegxl.info/art/
@bagder@mastodon.social IT complexity is ever increasing snd our dependence on it too…
@bagder@mastodon.social Bad things about Google's new format they hope to become widely adopted
@bagder@mastodon.social browser vendors should coordinate which subset of JPEG XL they want to support, and only this part of the standard needs to get implemented.
I remember JPEG and that you could never use progressive JPEGs. Some programs even offered an “export for web” feature so that you wouldn't use any unsupported JPEG features.
@bagder@mastodon.social It's a good hot take, but what amazes me most is the replies so far immediately jumping to conclusions with biased gut reactions as if their identity is tied to one or the other camp.
@bagder@mastodon.social
And, just wondering:
How many of those lines are for handling security issues such as boobytrapped JPEGs?
How many lines do the other HTML rendering engine use for the same function?
The graphical web has many sins to make amends for!
@bagder@mastodon.social
I really don't envy the people who'd have to rewrite that monstrosity.
See https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/on-building-jpeg-xl-for-wasm by @tedu@honk.tedunangst.com for the current state of the art method of decoding jpegxl safely, which is both hilarious and sad.
@bagder@mastodon.social Wait, so JPEG XL isn't completely dead? That's probably not what you meant to communicate but I'm so happy to hear that
fwiw I think that LOC of the reference implementation doesn't really say anything about anything - even if Firefox "adopted" it, which feels like a sensible choice given the state of things
@bagder@mastodon.social so that's what the XL is there for 🤔🤣
@bagder@mastodon.social could isolate the decoder in a WASM runtime and only starting the rewrite if and when the format becomes popular enough :-)
@bagder@mastodon.social that's why it's called XL! 😂