-> Speaking from the point of view of a recent convert from the Apache/PHP
-> world, one thing that will really lower the bar for people like me is a
-> document (or article) along the lines of "AOLServer and Tcl for
-> Apache/PHP users." From the end user stand point it may be good to have
-> packaged versions of AOLServer with snazzy front-ends for configuration
-> and maintenance/status of the server. I'm not a terrific write, but I
-> think I could maybe crank out something to assist PHP users in getting
-> acquainted with AOLServer and Tcl. Tcl along with AOLServer's API is
-> just as powerful and extensible as PHP is. In fact it offers a lot of
-> things that PHP simply doesn't (pooled DB connections, robust control
-> over the use of the HTTP protocol: responses codes, headers, mime
-> types, etc.).
I think Tcl (or, rather, "single language support") is one of the big things
holding AOLserver back. It's nice that you're all convinced of your
godliness under Tcl ;), but other smart people like other languages, and
they're not going to switch to AOLserver if it means switching to Tcl,
however much you tell them they should. Less chauvinism on this front
would be much more welcoming, IMO; outright advertising could only help.
As an example, PyWX (Python for AOLserver) fits seamlessly into AOLserver,
and is quite stable; I don't know about PHP and the Tomcat module, but they
exist, at least. One part of the new effort might publicize these things.
The Python community in particular is a good "target" population of
programmers for AOLserver, because mod_python for Apache is not very good,
while PyWX works very well. Once the alloca bug is flushed out of hiding, I'll
start the process of writing up a PyWX tutorial & making a stable 1.0
release.
Personally, I use AOLserver because configuring it is a snap, its internal
code is cleaner than any other C code on the planet, and it has the cleanest
and nicest module interface that I've ever seen. A big part of configuration
is the Tcl language: Apache suffers *badly* from a shoddy config file format,
or at least it did in 1.x. The silly process model Apache uses doesn't help,
either.
I've recently been considering switching away from AOLserver because I'm
using Quixote in all my complex Web apps; see
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6178
for an article about Quixote. Quixote has support for SCGI (similar to
FastCGI: persistent server process, served by a front-end server), which
in turn is quite clean and can run under any Web server. For the moment
I'll hang on to AOLserver to see what happens; I'm still committed to
maintaining PyWX, in any case.
cheers,
--titus
P.S. As I hinted, I have run across the alloca problem while benchmarking
AOLserver/PyWX, and it's one of the reasons that I haven't released the
latest (stable, fast, etc.) version of PyWX.
