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1 | FastCGI Developer's Kit README |
2 | ------------------------------ |
3 | |
4 | Version 2.0b2, 04 April 1997 |
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5 | $Id: README,v 1.6 1999/07/26 04:45:52 roberts Exp $ |
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6 | Copyright (c) 1996 Open Market, Inc. |
7 | See the file "LICENSE.TERMS" for information on usage and redistribution |
8 | of this file, and for a DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES. |
9 | |
10 | Basic Directions |
11 | ---------------- |
12 | |
13 | Open the kit's index page, index.html in this directory, using the |
14 | "Open File" command in your Web browser. The index page gives you an |
15 | overview of the kit structure and helps you navigate the kit. The |
16 | index page also contains links that run some example applications, but |
17 | the applications won't work when index.html is opened using the "Open |
18 | File" command because they aren't being accessed through a Web server. |
19 | |
20 | For further instructions see the FastCGI Developer's Kit |
21 | document, accessible via the index page. |
22 | |
23 | |
24 | TODO: |
25 | ---- |
26 | The following is a small list of what should be available in the final |
27 | release of the FDK. |
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28 | 1. Fix all compilation problems on all Unixes and NT. |
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29 | 2. Provide perl.c for perl5.003 (replace run() with runops()) |
30 | 3. Provide latest Tcl patches (NT requires Tcl7.5+) |
31 | 4. Provide FCGI_VERSION directive for automatic version recognition. |
32 | -- if available |
33 | 5. Provide new Java interface to conform to JDK1.1.1 (due to final |
34 | System.in) |
35 | 6. Provide samples of Perl on NT. |
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36 | |
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37 | |
38 | Changes with devkit 2.1.1 |
39 | ------------------------- |
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40 | |
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41 | *) Remove some debugging code and clean up some gcc warnings in cgi-fcgi.c. |
42 | |
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43 | *) Add multithread support to the fcgiapp lib and an example multithreaded |
44 | application, threaded.c. Based on work by Dennis Payne |
45 | <dpayne@softscape.com> and Gene Sokolov <hook@aktrad.ru>. |
46 | |
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47 | *) Remove the printf() and #include of stdio.h from examples/echo2.c. |
48 | |
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49 | *) Remove the static initialization of _fcgi_sF[] because on glibc 2.x based |
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50 | systems stdin/stdout/stderr are no longer static. |
51 | |
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52 | *) Flush FastCGI buffers at application exit. <eichin@fastengines.com> |
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53 | |
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54 | << INSERT OTHER STUFF HERE >> |
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55 | |
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56 | |
57 | What's New: Version 2.0b2, 04 April 1997 |
58 | -------------------------------------- |
59 | |
60 | Some additional bug fixes, mostly on NT port. The following list |
61 | of the bugs that have been and fixed: |
62 | 1. Updated build_no_shell.bat to create a FcgiBin directory under the |
63 | top level of the FastCGI kit and copy all executables and the |
64 | FastCGI dll there. This makes it easier to use. |
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65 | 2. Corrected the Unix version of OS_SpawnChild so that it didn't close |
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66 | the listenFd when forking off child processes. This code would |
67 | affect the cgi-fcgi application on Unix. The problem is that it |
68 | could only start one fastcgi process. Any other processes would not |
69 | get the listen file descriptor and they would die. |
70 | 3. Corrected cgi-fcgi.c so that it properly handled large posts. The |
71 | bug was introduced with the asynchronous I/O model implemented for |
72 | the Windows NT port. The problem was not clearing a bit indicating |
73 | that a read had completed. This caused the application to stall. |
74 | 4. Corrected OS_DoIo, the function used for scheduling I/O for cgi-fcgi. |
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75 | It had a bug where it wasn't creating a copy of the file descriptors |
76 | used for I/O. This would cause the master list of FDs to watch to be |
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77 | reset and thus would hang the application because we would no longer |
78 | watch for I/O on those file descriptors. (This problem was specific to |
79 | Unix and only happened with the cgi-fcgi application.) |
80 | 5. Cleaned up several compilation warnings present on OSF. |
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81 | |
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82 | |
83 | What's New: Version 2.0b1, 24 March 1997 |
84 | -------------------------------------- |
85 | |
86 | This "beta" release adds the functionality of "cgi-fcgi" to the |
87 | Windows NT platform and allows for creation of FastCGI applications |
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88 | running in Win32 environment. There is almost no new documentation |
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89 | provided, but will become part of this kit in the official release. |
90 | 1. Added FastCGI libraries running on Windows NT 3.51+ |
91 | 2. Rename errno to FCGI_errno in the FCGX_Stream, which was causing |
92 | problems on some Linux platforms and NT. |
93 | 3. Fixed a parenthesis problem in FCGI_gets |
94 | |
95 | |
96 | What's New: Version 1.5.1, 12 December 1996 |
97 | -------------------------------------- |
98 | |
99 | This release introduces mostly bug fixes, without any additional |
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100 | functionality to the kit. |
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101 | 1. Conditional compilation for the hp-ux compiler. |
102 | 2. Loop around the accept() call to eliminate "OS Error: Interrupted |
103 | System Call" message from appearing in the error logs. |
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104 | 3. Casting of the FCGI_Header to (char *), which eliminates the |
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105 | assertion failure "bufPtr->size>0". |
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106 | |
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107 | |
108 | What's New: Version 1.5, 12 June 1996 |
109 | -------------------------------------- |
110 | |
111 | General: |
112 | |
113 | Added a white paper on FastCGI application performance to the |
114 | doc directory. Generally brought the other docs up to date. |
115 | |
116 | Rearranged the kit to put more emphasis on running FastCGI-capable |
117 | servers and less on running cgi-fcgi. Added |
118 | examples/conf/om-httpd.config, a config file that demonstrates all |
119 | of the example apps. (Would like to have similar configs for NCSA |
120 | and Apache.) |
121 | |
122 | Added the tiny-authorizer and sample-store applications to |
123 | the examples. These are explained in the index.html. |
124 | |
125 | In addition to everything else it does, sample-store demonstrates |
126 | a bug in the Open Market WebServer 2.0: When an Authorizer |
127 | application denies access, the server tacks some extra junk onto |
128 | the end of the page the application returns. A little ugly but |
129 | not fatal. |
130 | |
131 | C libraries: |
132 | |
133 | Added the functions FCGX_Finish and FCGI_Finish. These functions |
134 | finish the current request from the HTTP server but do not begin a |
135 | new request. These functions make it possible for applications to |
136 | perform other processing between requests. An application must not |
137 | use its stdin, stdout, stderr, or environ between calling |
138 | FCGI_Finish and calling FCGI_Accept. See doc/FCGI_Finish.3 for |
139 | more information. The application examples/sample-store.c demonstrates |
140 | the use of FCGI_Finish. |
141 | |
142 | Added conditional 'extern "C"' stuff to the .h files fcgi_stdio.h, |
143 | fcgiapp.h, and fcgiappmisc.h for the benefit of C++ applications |
144 | (suggested by Jim McCarthy). |
145 | |
146 | Fixed two bugs in FCGX_VFPrintF (reported by Ben Laurie). These |
147 | bugs affected processing of %f format specifiers and of all format |
148 | specifiers containing a precision spec (e.g "%12.4g"). |
149 | |
150 | Fixed a bug in FCGX_Accept in which the environment variable |
151 | FCGI_WEBSERVER_ADDRS was being read rather than the specified |
152 | FCGI_WEB_SERVER_ADDRS. Fixed a bug in FCGX_Accept in which the |
153 | wrong storage was freed when FCGI_WEB_SERVER_ADDRS contained more |
154 | than one address or if the address check failed. |
155 | |
156 | Changed FCGX_Accept to avoid depending upon accept(2) returning the |
157 | correct value of sin_family in the socketaddr structure for an |
158 | AF_UNIX connection (SCO returns the wrong value, as reported by Paul |
159 | Mahoney). |
160 | |
161 | Changed the error retry logic in FCGX_Accept. FCGX_Accept now |
162 | returns -1 only in case of operating system errors that occur while |
163 | accepting a connection (e.g. out of file descriptors). Other errors |
164 | cause the current connection to be dropped and a new connection to |
165 | be attempted. |
166 | |
167 | Perl: |
168 | |
169 | Changed FCGI.xs to make it insensitive to Perl's treatment of |
170 | environ (we hope). Changed FCGI::accept so the initial environment |
171 | variables are not unset on the first call to FCGI::accept (or on |
172 | subsequent calls either). Added the echo-perl example |
173 | program. Added a workaround for the "empty initial environment bug" |
174 | to tiny-perl-fcgi. Changed the example Perl scripts to use a new |
175 | symbolic link ./perl, avoiding the HP-UX 32 character limit on the |
176 | first line of a command interpreter file. |
177 | |
178 | Because the FastCGI-enabled Perl interpreter uses the C fcgi_stdio |
179 | library, it picks up all the changes listed above for C. There's |
180 | a new Perl subroutine FCGI::finish. |
181 | |
182 | Tcl: |
183 | |
184 | Fixed a bug in tclFCGI.c that caused the request environment |
185 | variables to be lost. Changed FCGI_Accept so the initial |
186 | environment variables are not unset on the first call to FCGI_Accept |
187 | (or on subsequent calls either). Added the echo-tcl example |
188 | program. Fixed another bug that caused Tcl to become confused by |
189 | file opens; as a side effect of this change, writes to stdout/stderr |
190 | that occur in an app running as FastCGI before FCGI_Accept is called |
191 | are no-ops rather than crashing Tcl. Changed the example Tcl |
192 | scripts to use a new symbolic link ./tclsh, avoiding the HP-UX 32 |
193 | character limit on the first line of a command interpreter file. |
194 | |
195 | Because the FastCGI-enabled Tcl interpreter uses the C fcgi_stdio |
196 | library, it picks up all the changes listed above for C; there's |
197 | a new Tcl command FCGI_Finish. |
198 | |
199 | Java: |
200 | |
201 | Fixed a sign-extension bug in FCGIMessage.java that caused bad encodings |
202 | of names and values in name-value pairs for lengths in [128..255]. |
203 | Made small cleanups in the Java example programs to make them more |
204 | consistent with the other examples. |
205 | |
206 | |
207 | |
208 | What's New: Version 1.4, 10 May 1996 |
209 | -------------------------------------- |
210 | |
211 | Includes Java classes and Java examples. |
212 | |
213 | |
214 | |
215 | What's New: Version 1.3.1, 6 May 1996 |
216 | -------------------------------------- |
217 | |
218 | New, simplified, license terms. Includes an expanded whitepaper that |
219 | describes FastCGI support in Open Market's Secure WebServer 2.0. |
220 | Includes Open Market FastCGI 1.0 Programmer's Guide. Includes |
221 | "FastCGI: A High-Performance Gateway Interface", a position paper |
222 | presented at the workshop "Programming the Web - a search for APIs", |
223 | Fifth International World Wide Web Conference, 6 May 1996, Paris, |
224 | France. |
225 | |
226 | |
227 | |
228 | What's New: Version 1.3, 29 April 1996 |
229 | -------------------------------------- |
230 | |
231 | First public release; new license terms on all files. |
232 | |
233 | Changed cgi-fcgi.c to use SO_REUSEADDR when creating the listening socket; |
234 | this avoids the need to wait through the TIME_WAIT state on all the TCP |
235 | connections made by the previous instance of an external application |
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236 | you are restarting. |
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237 | |
238 | |
239 | |
240 | What's New: Version 1.2.2, 15 April 1996 |
241 | ---------------------------------------- |
242 | |
243 | Partially fixed a bug in Perl's FCGI::accept (source file FCGI.xs). |
244 | The per-request environment variables were being lost. Now the |
245 | per-request environment variables show up correctly, except that if |
246 | the Perl application has an empty initial environment, the environment |
247 | variables associated with the *first* request are lost. Therefore, |
248 | when starting Perl, always set some environment variable using the |
249 | AppClass -initial-env option, or by running cgi-fcgi in a non-empty |
250 | environment. |
251 | |
252 | |
253 | |
254 | What's New: Version 1.2.1, 22 March 1996 |
255 | ---------------------------------------- |
256 | |
257 | Fixed a bug in FCGI_Accept. If your application running as FastCGI |
258 | opened a file before calling FCGI_Accept, it would decide that it |
259 | was really running as CGI. Things went downhill quickly after that! |
260 | |
261 | Also added advisory locking to serialize calls to accept on shared |
262 | listening sockets on Solaris and IRIX, to work around problems |
263 | with concurrent accept calls on these platforms. |
264 | |
265 | |
266 | |
267 | What's New: Version 1.2, 20 March 1996 |
268 | -------------------------------------- |
269 | |
270 | 1. This version of the kit implements the most recent draft |
271 | of the protocol spec. Enhancements to the protocol include |
272 | a BEGIN_REQUEST record that simplifies request ID management |
273 | and transmits role and keep-alive information, and a simplified |
274 | end-of-stream indication. |
275 | |
276 | The protocol spec has been revised to describe exactly what's |
277 | been implemented, leaving out the features that we hope to |
278 | introduce in later releases. |
279 | |
280 | At the application level, the visible change is the FCGI_ROLE |
281 | variable that's available to applications. This allows an application |
282 | to check that it has been invoked in the expected role. A single |
283 | application can be written to respond in several roles. The |
284 | FCGI_Accept.3 manpage contains more information. |
285 | |
286 | 2. We introduced the new "module" prefix FCGX in order to simplify |
287 | the relationship between fcgi_stdio and fcgiapp. |
288 | |
289 | A growing number of functions are provided in both fcgi_stdio and |
290 | fcgiapp versions. Rather than inventing an ad hoc solution for each |
291 | naming conflict (as we did with FCGI_accept and FCGI_Accept), we've |
292 | bitten the bullet and systematically renamed *all* the fcgapp |
293 | primitives with the prefix FCGX_. In fcgi_stdio, we've renamed |
294 | FCGI_accept to FCGI_Accept. So all functions that are common in the |
295 | two libraries have the same name modulo the different prefixes. |
296 | |
297 | The Accept function visible in Tcl is now called FCGI_Accept, not |
298 | FCGI_accept. |
299 | |
300 | The Accept function visible in Perl is now FCGI::accept. All |
301 | lower case names for functions and all upper case names for |
302 | modules appears to be a Perl convention, so we conform. |
303 | |
304 | 3. The kit now fully supports the Responder, Authorizer, |
305 | and Filter roles. |
306 | |
307 | The Filter role required a new function, FCGI_StartFilterData. |
308 | FCGI_StartFilterData changes the input stream from reading |
309 | FCGI_STDIN data to reading FCGI_DATA data. The manpage |
310 | gives full details. |
311 | |
312 | Another new function, FCGI_SetExitStatus, is primarily for |
313 | the Responder role but is available to all. FCGI_SetExitStatus |
314 | allows an application to set a nonzero "exit" status |
315 | before completing a request and calling FCGI_Accept again. |
316 | The manpage gives full details. |
317 | |
318 | These two new functions are provided at both the fcgi_stdio interface |
319 | and the basic fcgiapp interface. Naturally, the fcgiapp versions are |
320 | called FCGX_StartFilterData and FCGX_SetExitStatus. |
321 | |
322 | 4. The fcgiapp interface changed slightly in order to treat |
323 | the streams and environment data more symmetrically. |
324 | |
325 | FCGX_Accept now returns an environment pointer, rather than requiring |
326 | a call to FCGX_GetAllParams to retrieve an environment pointer. |
327 | FCGX_GetParam takes an explicit environment pointer argument. |
328 | FCGX_GetAllParams is eliminated. See the documentation in the header |
329 | file for complete information. |
330 | |
331 | fcgiapp also added the procedure FCGX_IsCGI, providing a standardized |
332 | test of whether the app was started as CGI or FastCGI. |
333 | |
334 | 5. We've ported the kits to vendor-supported ANSI C compilers |
335 | on Sun (Solaris 2.X), HP, and Digital platforms. GCC can be |
336 | selected on these platforms by performing SETENV CC gcc before |
337 | running configure. |
338 | |
339 | |
340 | |
341 | What's New: Version 1.1, 30 Jan 1996 |
342 | ------------------------------------ |
343 | |
344 | 1. More platforms: Digital UNIX, IBM AIX, Silicon Graphics IRIX, |
345 | Sun SunOS 4.1.4. |
346 | |
347 | 2. Perl and Tcl: Simple recipes for producing Perl and Tcl |
348 | interpreters that run as FastCGI applications. No source |
349 | code changes are needed to Perl and Tcl. Documented |
350 | in separate documents, accessible via the index page. |
351 | |
352 | |
353 | |
354 | Version 1.0, 10 Jan 1996 |
355 | ------------------------ |