Proposal: collaborate somehow on browser devtools protocol overlap

Chrome, Safari, and Edge all have a similar debugging protocol, and now Firefox is implementing something similar as well.

Today at TPAC members of the Browser Testing and Tools working group (including Microsoft, Saucelabs, Bocoup and Google) resolved to try to collaborate more on the commonalities between our debug protocols via the WICG.

It’s not clear exactly what form this collaboration should take (many of us are wary of creating a formal specification for a protocol at this time), but it seems clear we should be collaborating somehow - at least discussing technical issues, ideally sharing some tests and documentation, etc. I propose we create a WICG repo called “devtools-protocol” and hack together on details there.

Thoughts?

The devtools-protocol repo sounds great as a first step followed by collaborating around a README-type document which outlines the scope and/or goals of our further collaboration.

As noted, we at Microsoft too are wary of any far-reaching specification, but are interested in starting small (tests, facilitating implementation conversation, identifying an MVP of stable APIs (e.g. debugging) to coalesce around, etc.).

But indeed, the first and best step is to put something together which is public, allows browser vendors and others to join in, and helps us start to organize our thinking and action in this space.

devtools-protocol lgtm!

FYI, URL for the GitHub repo: https://github.com/WICG/devtools-protocol