Newbie question on Native Client

[SAURABH AGARWAL]

Hi,

I am very new to Native Client and have some questions regarding
browser compatibility and development of modules.

As I understand, Native Client can operate in browsers under two modes
i.e. plug-in and in-built (only Chrome). So my questions are
(hopefully they dont sound dumb).

1] Are there plug-in's for all the popular browsers (Firefox, IE,
Chrome). The "Getting Started" guide has instructions to install the
plug-in only in firefox (--prebuilt firefox_install). How can I use
the plug-in for IE or Chrome.

2] Can I run the tests/examples in Chrome (with in-built Native
Client). Is there any guide or documentation that I can refer to for
this.

3] Do I need Visual Studio to be able to run a simple C program in a
browser using Native Client? Again is there any guide that I can refer
to, for running my simple C program with the help of Native Client.

Thanks,
Saurabh

[Brad Chen]

Welcome to Native Client!

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 2:15 PM, SAURABH AGARWAL <sagar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I am very new to Native Client and have some questions regarding
browser compatibility and development of modules.

As I understand, Native Client can operate in browsers under two modes
i.e. plug-in and in-built (only Chrome). So my questions are
(hopefully they dont sound dumb).

1] Are there plug-in's for all the popular browsers (Firefox, IE,
Chrome). The "Getting Started" guide has instructions to install the
plug-in only in firefox (--prebuilt firefox_install). How can I use
the plug-in for IE or Chrome.

Chrome and many other NPAPI look in the Firefox plugin directory so the firefox_install instructions will work for all of them. On Windows, Chrome has Native Client built in, protected behind a command-line flag. The built-in version is still lacking a few features that the plugin has.

Our solution for IE is to use Chrome Frame, although I don't think we have made it into their release yet. For now please use a different browser. 

2] Can I run the tests/examples in Chrome (with in-built Native
Client). Is there any guide or documentation that I can refer to for
this.

The built-in stuff is still a bit tricky. See the NativeClientInGoogleChrome wiki page, linked from http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient. You need to be using the 'dev-channel' release of Chrome for 32-bit Windows; that's the only place where integrated support works at this time. NaCl does not work on any 64-bit Windows systems yet.

3] Do I need Visual Studio to be able to run a simple C program in a
browser using Native Client? Again is there any guide that I can refer
to, for running my simple C program with the help of Native Client.

You don't need Visual Studio. Please go to code.google.com/p/nativeclient and follow the Documentation/README link on the right for our Getting Started guide and other documentation.

Brad

[Ian Lewis]

Visual Studio is only necessary if you want to rebuild the NaCl runtime and tools.

The NaCl compiler, which is what you need to compile a program that runs inside the NaCl environment, is part of the download package at http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/wiki/Downloads.

Be aware that at this time there isn't a particularly good solution for *debugging* NaCl programs on Windows. We're working on it. :-)

Ian

[SAURABH AGARWAL]

Thanks a lot for your clarifications.

Native Client has again made me interested in C programming. Used to
love it during college but lost track later. I'm hoping to be able to
write some simple C programs and use them with Native Client.