[Seaside] updateRoot: Weirdness

[Stuart Herring]

> Hey, lets look to the roots: Seaside serving http requests. And i can
> assure you, that for 99% of the users in the world, thing which
> serving http requests called web-server.
> You may call it web application development framework or anything you
> want, but this will not makes any difference unless you stop handling
> http requests.
> Its a layer, which delivers content to browsers using standard
> protocol and from this point of view, it must be flexible enough to be
> able to deliver any content which developer wants to.
>
> And you saying 'standalone web server'.. It looks like you insist that
> seaside in 90% cases in not complete solution for _BASIC_ web
> solutions?
> Why it must force developer to use third party tools to be complete?
> Its better to be slow, as hog but be COMPLETE rather than flexible,
> complex, but incomplete...

But that's the issue, Seaside does not handle HTTP requests, Comanche
handles HTTP requests, and Swazoo handles HTTP Requests, but Seaside
does not. Whilst it does deal with a "Request" object, it does not
accept the TCP connection, or listen on a port, or anything that is
actually the responsibility of a web server.
If the static file handling is to be done in Smalltalk - and I can
certainly see the advantage in that for development, then the actual
web server - Swazoo or Kom or whatever is where that should be done.
Just like in the Java world, no one expects code to handle static
files in Struts or JSF or Tapestry, because Tomcat or Jetty do that.

So plain static file handling by Seaside involves far more layers and
complexity than required - it's pointless.
However, having said that, I really like the FileLibrary approach, due
to the ability to version the resources.

Regards,
Stuart.