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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 1.3 1999/06/07 05:39:02 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. |
28 | 1. Fix all compilation problems on all Unixes and NT. |
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 | |
37 | |
38 | Changes with devkit 2.1.1 |
39 | ------------------------- |
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40 | |
41 | *) Remove the static initialization of _fcgi_sF[] because on glibc 2.x based |
42 | systems stdin/stdout/stderr are no longer static. |
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43 | |
44 | *) Flush FastCGI buffers at application exit. <eichin@fastengines.com> |
45 | |
46 | << INSERT OTHER STUFF HERE >> |
47 | |
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48 | |
49 | What's New: Version 2.0b2, 04 April 1997 |
50 | -------------------------------------- |
51 | |
52 | Some additional bug fixes, mostly on NT port. The following list |
53 | of the bugs that have been and fixed: |
54 | 1. Updated build_no_shell.bat to create a FcgiBin directory under the |
55 | top level of the FastCGI kit and copy all executables and the |
56 | FastCGI dll there. This makes it easier to use. |
57 | 2. Corrected the Unix version of OS_SpawnChild so that it didn't close |
58 | the listenFd when forking off child processes. This code would |
59 | affect the cgi-fcgi application on Unix. The problem is that it |
60 | could only start one fastcgi process. Any other processes would not |
61 | get the listen file descriptor and they would die. |
62 | 3. Corrected cgi-fcgi.c so that it properly handled large posts. The |
63 | bug was introduced with the asynchronous I/O model implemented for |
64 | the Windows NT port. The problem was not clearing a bit indicating |
65 | that a read had completed. This caused the application to stall. |
66 | 4. Corrected OS_DoIo, the function used for scheduling I/O for cgi-fcgi. |
67 | It had a bug where it wasn't creating a copy of the file descriptors |
68 | used for I/O. This would cause the master list of FDs to watch to be |
69 | reset and thus would hang the application because we would no longer |
70 | watch for I/O on those file descriptors. (This problem was specific to |
71 | Unix and only happened with the cgi-fcgi application.) |
72 | 5. Cleaned up several compilation warnings present on OSF. |
73 | |
74 | |
75 | What's New: Version 2.0b1, 24 March 1997 |
76 | -------------------------------------- |
77 | |
78 | This "beta" release adds the functionality of "cgi-fcgi" to the |
79 | Windows NT platform and allows for creation of FastCGI applications |
80 | running in Win32 environment. There is almost no new documentation |
81 | provided, but will become part of this kit in the official release. |
82 | 1. Added FastCGI libraries running on Windows NT 3.51+ |
83 | 2. Rename errno to FCGI_errno in the FCGX_Stream, which was causing |
84 | problems on some Linux platforms and NT. |
85 | 3. Fixed a parenthesis problem in FCGI_gets |
86 | |
87 | |
88 | What's New: Version 1.5.1, 12 December 1996 |
89 | -------------------------------------- |
90 | |
91 | This release introduces mostly bug fixes, without any additional |
92 | functionality to the kit. |
93 | 1. Conditional compilation for the hp-ux compiler. |
94 | 2. Loop around the accept() call to eliminate "OS Error: Interrupted |
95 | System Call" message from appearing in the error logs. |
96 | 3. Casting of the FCGI_Header to (char *), which eliminates the |
97 | assertion failure "bufPtr->size>0". |
98 | |
99 | |
100 | What's New: Version 1.5, 12 June 1996 |
101 | -------------------------------------- |
102 | |
103 | General: |
104 | |
105 | Added a white paper on FastCGI application performance to the |
106 | doc directory. Generally brought the other docs up to date. |
107 | |
108 | Rearranged the kit to put more emphasis on running FastCGI-capable |
109 | servers and less on running cgi-fcgi. Added |
110 | examples/conf/om-httpd.config, a config file that demonstrates all |
111 | of the example apps. (Would like to have similar configs for NCSA |
112 | and Apache.) |
113 | |
114 | Added the tiny-authorizer and sample-store applications to |
115 | the examples. These are explained in the index.html. |
116 | |
117 | In addition to everything else it does, sample-store demonstrates |
118 | a bug in the Open Market WebServer 2.0: When an Authorizer |
119 | application denies access, the server tacks some extra junk onto |
120 | the end of the page the application returns. A little ugly but |
121 | not fatal. |
122 | |
123 | C libraries: |
124 | |
125 | Added the functions FCGX_Finish and FCGI_Finish. These functions |
126 | finish the current request from the HTTP server but do not begin a |
127 | new request. These functions make it possible for applications to |
128 | perform other processing between requests. An application must not |
129 | use its stdin, stdout, stderr, or environ between calling |
130 | FCGI_Finish and calling FCGI_Accept. See doc/FCGI_Finish.3 for |
131 | more information. The application examples/sample-store.c demonstrates |
132 | the use of FCGI_Finish. |
133 | |
134 | Added conditional 'extern "C"' stuff to the .h files fcgi_stdio.h, |
135 | fcgiapp.h, and fcgiappmisc.h for the benefit of C++ applications |
136 | (suggested by Jim McCarthy). |
137 | |
138 | Fixed two bugs in FCGX_VFPrintF (reported by Ben Laurie). These |
139 | bugs affected processing of %f format specifiers and of all format |
140 | specifiers containing a precision spec (e.g "%12.4g"). |
141 | |
142 | Fixed a bug in FCGX_Accept in which the environment variable |
143 | FCGI_WEBSERVER_ADDRS was being read rather than the specified |
144 | FCGI_WEB_SERVER_ADDRS. Fixed a bug in FCGX_Accept in which the |
145 | wrong storage was freed when FCGI_WEB_SERVER_ADDRS contained more |
146 | than one address or if the address check failed. |
147 | |
148 | Changed FCGX_Accept to avoid depending upon accept(2) returning the |
149 | correct value of sin_family in the socketaddr structure for an |
150 | AF_UNIX connection (SCO returns the wrong value, as reported by Paul |
151 | Mahoney). |
152 | |
153 | Changed the error retry logic in FCGX_Accept. FCGX_Accept now |
154 | returns -1 only in case of operating system errors that occur while |
155 | accepting a connection (e.g. out of file descriptors). Other errors |
156 | cause the current connection to be dropped and a new connection to |
157 | be attempted. |
158 | |
159 | Perl: |
160 | |
161 | Changed FCGI.xs to make it insensitive to Perl's treatment of |
162 | environ (we hope). Changed FCGI::accept so the initial environment |
163 | variables are not unset on the first call to FCGI::accept (or on |
164 | subsequent calls either). Added the echo-perl example |
165 | program. Added a workaround for the "empty initial environment bug" |
166 | to tiny-perl-fcgi. Changed the example Perl scripts to use a new |
167 | symbolic link ./perl, avoiding the HP-UX 32 character limit on the |
168 | first line of a command interpreter file. |
169 | |
170 | Because the FastCGI-enabled Perl interpreter uses the C fcgi_stdio |
171 | library, it picks up all the changes listed above for C. There's |
172 | a new Perl subroutine FCGI::finish. |
173 | |
174 | Tcl: |
175 | |
176 | Fixed a bug in tclFCGI.c that caused the request environment |
177 | variables to be lost. Changed FCGI_Accept so the initial |
178 | environment variables are not unset on the first call to FCGI_Accept |
179 | (or on subsequent calls either). Added the echo-tcl example |
180 | program. Fixed another bug that caused Tcl to become confused by |
181 | file opens; as a side effect of this change, writes to stdout/stderr |
182 | that occur in an app running as FastCGI before FCGI_Accept is called |
183 | are no-ops rather than crashing Tcl. Changed the example Tcl |
184 | scripts to use a new symbolic link ./tclsh, avoiding the HP-UX 32 |
185 | character limit on the first line of a command interpreter file. |
186 | |
187 | Because the FastCGI-enabled Tcl interpreter uses the C fcgi_stdio |
188 | library, it picks up all the changes listed above for C; there's |
189 | a new Tcl command FCGI_Finish. |
190 | |
191 | Java: |
192 | |
193 | Fixed a sign-extension bug in FCGIMessage.java that caused bad encodings |
194 | of names and values in name-value pairs for lengths in [128..255]. |
195 | Made small cleanups in the Java example programs to make them more |
196 | consistent with the other examples. |
197 | |
198 | |
199 | |
200 | What's New: Version 1.4, 10 May 1996 |
201 | -------------------------------------- |
202 | |
203 | Includes Java classes and Java examples. |
204 | |
205 | |
206 | |
207 | What's New: Version 1.3.1, 6 May 1996 |
208 | -------------------------------------- |
209 | |
210 | New, simplified, license terms. Includes an expanded whitepaper that |
211 | describes FastCGI support in Open Market's Secure WebServer 2.0. |
212 | Includes Open Market FastCGI 1.0 Programmer's Guide. Includes |
213 | "FastCGI: A High-Performance Gateway Interface", a position paper |
214 | presented at the workshop "Programming the Web - a search for APIs", |
215 | Fifth International World Wide Web Conference, 6 May 1996, Paris, |
216 | France. |
217 | |
218 | |
219 | |
220 | What's New: Version 1.3, 29 April 1996 |
221 | -------------------------------------- |
222 | |
223 | First public release; new license terms on all files. |
224 | |
225 | Changed cgi-fcgi.c to use SO_REUSEADDR when creating the listening socket; |
226 | this avoids the need to wait through the TIME_WAIT state on all the TCP |
227 | connections made by the previous instance of an external application |
228 | you are restarting. |
229 | |
230 | |
231 | |
232 | What's New: Version 1.2.2, 15 April 1996 |
233 | ---------------------------------------- |
234 | |
235 | Partially fixed a bug in Perl's FCGI::accept (source file FCGI.xs). |
236 | The per-request environment variables were being lost. Now the |
237 | per-request environment variables show up correctly, except that if |
238 | the Perl application has an empty initial environment, the environment |
239 | variables associated with the *first* request are lost. Therefore, |
240 | when starting Perl, always set some environment variable using the |
241 | AppClass -initial-env option, or by running cgi-fcgi in a non-empty |
242 | environment. |
243 | |
244 | |
245 | |
246 | What's New: Version 1.2.1, 22 March 1996 |
247 | ---------------------------------------- |
248 | |
249 | Fixed a bug in FCGI_Accept. If your application running as FastCGI |
250 | opened a file before calling FCGI_Accept, it would decide that it |
251 | was really running as CGI. Things went downhill quickly after that! |
252 | |
253 | Also added advisory locking to serialize calls to accept on shared |
254 | listening sockets on Solaris and IRIX, to work around problems |
255 | with concurrent accept calls on these platforms. |
256 | |
257 | |
258 | |
259 | What's New: Version 1.2, 20 March 1996 |
260 | -------------------------------------- |
261 | |
262 | 1. This version of the kit implements the most recent draft |
263 | of the protocol spec. Enhancements to the protocol include |
264 | a BEGIN_REQUEST record that simplifies request ID management |
265 | and transmits role and keep-alive information, and a simplified |
266 | end-of-stream indication. |
267 | |
268 | The protocol spec has been revised to describe exactly what's |
269 | been implemented, leaving out the features that we hope to |
270 | introduce in later releases. |
271 | |
272 | At the application level, the visible change is the FCGI_ROLE |
273 | variable that's available to applications. This allows an application |
274 | to check that it has been invoked in the expected role. A single |
275 | application can be written to respond in several roles. The |
276 | FCGI_Accept.3 manpage contains more information. |
277 | |
278 | 2. We introduced the new "module" prefix FCGX in order to simplify |
279 | the relationship between fcgi_stdio and fcgiapp. |
280 | |
281 | A growing number of functions are provided in both fcgi_stdio and |
282 | fcgiapp versions. Rather than inventing an ad hoc solution for each |
283 | naming conflict (as we did with FCGI_accept and FCGI_Accept), we've |
284 | bitten the bullet and systematically renamed *all* the fcgapp |
285 | primitives with the prefix FCGX_. In fcgi_stdio, we've renamed |
286 | FCGI_accept to FCGI_Accept. So all functions that are common in the |
287 | two libraries have the same name modulo the different prefixes. |
288 | |
289 | The Accept function visible in Tcl is now called FCGI_Accept, not |
290 | FCGI_accept. |
291 | |
292 | The Accept function visible in Perl is now FCGI::accept. All |
293 | lower case names for functions and all upper case names for |
294 | modules appears to be a Perl convention, so we conform. |
295 | |
296 | 3. The kit now fully supports the Responder, Authorizer, |
297 | and Filter roles. |
298 | |
299 | The Filter role required a new function, FCGI_StartFilterData. |
300 | FCGI_StartFilterData changes the input stream from reading |
301 | FCGI_STDIN data to reading FCGI_DATA data. The manpage |
302 | gives full details. |
303 | |
304 | Another new function, FCGI_SetExitStatus, is primarily for |
305 | the Responder role but is available to all. FCGI_SetExitStatus |
306 | allows an application to set a nonzero "exit" status |
307 | before completing a request and calling FCGI_Accept again. |
308 | The manpage gives full details. |
309 | |
310 | These two new functions are provided at both the fcgi_stdio interface |
311 | and the basic fcgiapp interface. Naturally, the fcgiapp versions are |
312 | called FCGX_StartFilterData and FCGX_SetExitStatus. |
313 | |
314 | 4. The fcgiapp interface changed slightly in order to treat |
315 | the streams and environment data more symmetrically. |
316 | |
317 | FCGX_Accept now returns an environment pointer, rather than requiring |
318 | a call to FCGX_GetAllParams to retrieve an environment pointer. |
319 | FCGX_GetParam takes an explicit environment pointer argument. |
320 | FCGX_GetAllParams is eliminated. See the documentation in the header |
321 | file for complete information. |
322 | |
323 | fcgiapp also added the procedure FCGX_IsCGI, providing a standardized |
324 | test of whether the app was started as CGI or FastCGI. |
325 | |
326 | 5. We've ported the kits to vendor-supported ANSI C compilers |
327 | on Sun (Solaris 2.X), HP, and Digital platforms. GCC can be |
328 | selected on these platforms by performing SETENV CC gcc before |
329 | running configure. |
330 | |
331 | |
332 | |
333 | What's New: Version 1.1, 30 Jan 1996 |
334 | ------------------------------------ |
335 | |
336 | 1. More platforms: Digital UNIX, IBM AIX, Silicon Graphics IRIX, |
337 | Sun SunOS 4.1.4. |
338 | |
339 | 2. Perl and Tcl: Simple recipes for producing Perl and Tcl |
340 | interpreters that run as FastCGI applications. No source |
341 | code changes are needed to Perl and Tcl. Documented |
342 | in separate documents, accessible via the index page. |
343 | |
344 | |
345 | |
346 | Version 1.0, 10 Jan 1996 |
347 | ------------------------ |