KomHttp v. Swazoo server

David Shaffer cdshaffer at acm.org
Thu Oct 20 19:16:00 UTC 2005


Jimmie Houchin wrote:

> KomHttp seems to be the default http server for Squeak.
>
> It seems that is fairly due to historical reasons.
>
> Are there technical reasons for choosing KomHttp over Swazoo?
> If I remember correctly Kom is http 1.0 and Swazoo is http 1.1, yes?
>
> Is it likely that KomHttp will remain the default?
>
> Are they both pretty stable?
>
> The SM page at
> http://map1.squeakfoundation.org/sm/package/0fdb5ffc-cfa1-4d40-96c2-fe325bc8ba5f
>
> for KomHttp says alpha.
>
> http://map1.squeakfoundation.org/sm/package/0a5ade31-262b-4d8e-986c-53d1aa254e19
>
> for Swazoo says beta.
>
> Just looking for opinions (gentle please :) and education.
>
> Jimmie
>
The Squeak Swazoo port has not been updated and I cannot get it to work
in 3.7 or 3.8.  For someone with no familiarity with Swazoo (such as
myself), it would probably take 1-2 hours to fix...based on playing with
it for 25 minutes :-(  (the authors began a kind of "VisualWorks"
compatibility library in Squeak but things fell apart with the advent of
Chronology in Squeak).

I use Kom.  I'm not sure what you mean by HTTP/1.1.  If you mean
keep-alive, the most significant difference between 1.0 and 1.1, then
Kom has it (although I find it buggy when used behind an apache proxy so
I turn it off).  The extensive use of dynamic variables in the Kom
module system is, well, disappointing but I have found it very easy to
create my own custom configurations and modules.  I found it useful to
use ModuleAssembly (misleading name) to assemble a simple server and
then open the server in an explorer to study the parent-child
relationships.  Then, look at the list of modules (ModLog, ModMulti,
ModAlias being the ones I use a lot) and you should get an idea of the
power of Kom's URL mapping facilities.  I agree with Goran that it is a
bit over engineered but after an hour of exploring you should be pretty
competent at building complex servers.

David




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