Re: guile and apache

[David Lutterkort <lutter at cise dot ufl dot edu>]

David Pirotte <david@altosw.be> writes:

> I wish to develop cgi scripts in guile:
> 
> 	- is it possible ?
> 	- is there an apache module I should get/compile/install ?

If you truly mean CGI scripts, then the only thing you need is a working
guile installation. Make sure you get version 1.3.4 since its startup time
is a lot shorter than that of previous versions and your webserver will
start a new interpreter for every CGI script you run.

Unless you have a site with a _serious_ number of hits every day, this
solution should be good enough (tm) for now. 

If you want/need the usual fast interpreter-embedded-in-apache solution,
you are currently out of luck: AFAIK, it is presently not possible to write
a mod_guile for apache, because guile wants to take over the application
for garbage collection purposes, which apache doesn't like. There was
somebody working on this some time ago but I don't think that that work is
finished yet. Check the mailing list archives.

<rant>
IMHO, a mod_guile would be _really_ cool. I've been playing with
AOLServer/TCL and Apache/php lately: while they are pretty good tools for
the job, it's sad to see that they all fall into the "little language"
pitfalls and produce a language that is 90% ok, but lack the advanced
features of scheme like decent scoping rules, higher-order functions or a
macro system.

There are lots of people who argue that you don't really need a strong
language for web applications, since the scripts are usually really
short. I am not completely convinced. Stuff like the ArsDigita Community
System is at ~ 6000 lines of TCL scripts and counting. Seems like there are
web applications that start approaching serious size ...
</rant>

Cheers,
David