Tcl - tcl-httpd wub or aolserver

Author

tcl-httpd wub or aolserver

gavino

2007-12-21, 4:27 am

someone said wub is only one maintained now?
anyone?

tom.rmadilo

2007-12-21, 4:27 am

On Dec 20, 3:25 pm, gavino <gavcom...@gmail.com> wrote:
> someone said wub is only one maintained now?
> anyone?

Ummm, no. AOLserver is actively maintained, but it is a mature
project. The Tcl API of AOLserver has been very stable for over a
decade. The C internals have gone through a major restructuring,
finished up last year. There is a wide variety of users and
developers.

In the last month I've been polishing up my ODBC and LDAP modules.

It is difficult to gauge a project just by how much maintenance is
going on. In AOLserver there are very few bugs which show up. When one
does show up it appears to be found by extreme conditions of testing
which never show up in the real world, still they are actively pursued
and fixed.

The recent makeover of the internals may be the last which is done by
AOL. For better or worse they have somewhat abandoned further
development. However, the new version 4.5 is actually faster than the
previous 4.0.10. Some community members, including me have been
testing the performance. We were all somewhat surprised that AOLserver
is faster at static files than lighttpd for most files. lighttpd uses
a different syscall on linux which bypasses the user layer, and helps
it go faster than AOLserver for large files, however, if something
goes wrong after the handoff, the webserver will not know about it.
lighttpd also has trouble with logging if you have a multi-processor
server. In short, it takes shortcuts which are okay for serving most
content, but has obvious di

vantages for more exacting users.

No need to compare AOLserver performance to any other server on the
market, lighttpd is the only one even close.

Anyway, the point is that you can pick any version of AOLserver and
use it for many years to come and you will never worry about the core
code. The more important question for the years ahead is what about
supporting all the new stuff which will come out. There is along list
of modules which are available for AOLserver. A module is a
combination of any existing C library (libodbc, libldap, openssl,
etc.) and an interface file which exposes the library API to the Tcl
layer. Since Tcl and AOLserver have extensive C API, this is a
relatively easy job. Most module code has been contributed and
maintained over the years by groups outside of AOL. For instance, the
Oracle database driver was contributed by ArsDigita and has been
maintained and updated by very capable developers. The openssl module
was contributed by Scott G., I think with the support of his employer,
the U.S. government.

The point here is that AOLserver is extended with modules which are
based upon relatively stable, and widely available libraries of C
code. There is a huge investment and interest in maintaining these
library API, and AOLserver benefits from this effort just by
maintaining an interface file.

Of course there is lots of Tcl code which runs with AOLserver.
Essentially all Tcl code which can be run with tclsh, including
loadable modules should work with AOLserver. Except from this desktop
applications, wish applications, etc.

George Peter Staplin

2007-12-21, 4:27 am

gavino wrote:
> someone said wub is only one maintained now?
> anyone?

Colin McCormack (of Wub fame) was one of the maintainers and active
developers of tclhttpd.

Since Colin has worked on Wub, and for the last few years there haven't
been any new releases of tclhttpd. Tclhttpd's last release was in 2004.

Looking here I see that as of today the last change was 19 months ago:
http://tclhttpd.cvs.sourceforge.net/tclhttpd/tclhttpd/

If it's not dead, tclhttpd has retired.

Most of the tclhttpd bugs are actually bugs in Tcl IMO. The one I've
run into before is with fcopy. I'm planning to rewrite some of the
fcopy code paths, because we have had bugs in fcopy seemingly for years,
and I'm sick of them going unfixed and unresolved on multiple platforms.
The bugs are also hard to narrow down. My first step is going to be to
enhance the test suite where possible. After that I want to
refactor/restructure. At the very least it will be a cleaner place for
the bugs to live. :)

George
--
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an
understanding of ourselves. -- Carl Jung

Robert Hicks

2007-12-21, 7:16 pm

Are there binaries (for Windows) available or source it?

Robert

tom.rmadilo

2007-12-21, 7:16 pm

On Dec 21, 12:02 pm, Robert Hicks <sigz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Are there binaries (for Windows) available or source it?
>
> Robert

You can download a current snapshot of the origin via my git repo:
http://junom.com/gitweb/gitweb.perl...ortlog;h=origin

The snapshot link on the first line is the most recent code minus the
CVS directories you get with a cvs download.

The README file says you need nmake for Windows. You probably need to
install Tcl as well, you need different configure options for Tcl, the
prefix needs to match up with where you install AOLserver, and you
need to configure with both --enable-threads and --enable-shared
(however you do that on windows).

David Gravereaux

2007-12-22, 7:16 pm

George Peter Staplin wrote:

> If it's not dead, tclhttpd has retired.

As far as I'm aware, no new found bugs or features can be fixed/added to
tclhttpd due to a requirement to have test procedures. As tclhttpd has
no test suite, no test can be added, as there is no framework to add
anything to..

I'm sure the issue is plain to see.

Also, some of the never really working session code can't be fixed as
"someone might be using it". what a shame..

I really wanted to see my chunk transfer mod get added, but it won't
ever happen.

When is the funeral?

gavino

2007-12-24, 4:26 am

On Dec 20, 7:16 pm, "tom.rmadilo" <tom.rmad...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 20, 3:25 pm, gavino <gavcom...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Ummm, no. AOLserver is actively maintained, but it is a mature
> project. The Tcl API of AOLserver has been very stable for over a
> decade. The C internals have gone through a major restructuring,
> finished up last year. There is a wide variety of users and
> developers.
>
> In the last month I've been polishing up my ODBC and LDAP modules.
>
> It is difficult to gauge a project just by how much maintenance is
> going on. In AOLserver there are very few bugs which show up. When one
> does show up it appears to be found by extreme conditions of testing
> which never show up in the real world, still they are actively pursued
> and fixed.
>
> The recent makeover of the internals may be the last which is done by
> AOL. For better or worse they have somewhat abandoned further
> development. However, the new version 4.5 is actually faster than the
> previous 4.0.10. Some community members, including me have been
> testing the performance. We were all somewhat surprised that AOLserver
> is faster at static files than lighttpd for most files. lighttpd uses
> a different syscall on linux which bypasses the user layer, and helps
> it go faster than AOLserver for large files, however, if something
> goes wrong after the handoff, the webserver will not know about it.
> lighttpd also has trouble with logging if you have a multi-processor
> server. In short, it takes shortcuts which are okay for serving most
> content, but has obvious di

vantages for more exacting users.
>
> No need to compare AOLserver performance to any other server on the
> market, lighttpd is the only one even close.
>
> Anyway, the point is that you can pick any version of AOLserver and
> use it for many years to come and you will never worry about the core
> code. The more important question for the years ahead is what about
> supporting all the new stuff which will come out. There is along list
> of modules which are available for AOLserver. A module is a
> combination of any existing C library (libodbc, libldap, openssl,
> etc.) and an interface file which exposes the library API to the Tcl
> layer. Since Tcl and AOLserver have extensive C API, this is a
> relatively easy job. Most module code has been contributed and
> maintained over the years by groups outside of AOL. For instance, the
> Oracle database driver was contributed by ArsDigita and has been
> maintained and updated by very capable developers. The openssl module
> was contributed by Scott G., I think with the support of his employer,
> the U.S. government.
>
> The point here is that AOLserver is extended with modules which are
> based upon relatively stable, and widely available libraries of C
> code. There is a huge investment and interest in maintaining these
> library API, and AOLserver benefits from this effort just by
> maintaining an interface file.
>
> Of course there is lots of Tcl code which runs with AOLserver.
> Essentially all Tcl code which can be run with tclsh, including
> loadable modules should work with AOLserver. Except from this desktop
> applications, wish applications, etc.

wow

awesome!

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