[mapserver-dev] ModMapserver?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Steve, et al,

How might or might not this relate to being able to build an IIS module 
equivalent? This is probably a question for the MS4W guys, but every 
client I have talked to that runs windows wants to run mapserver in IIS 
not apache. And while we can do that, I'm just wondering if the things 
that we need to do to support an Apache Module are not similar to what 
needs to be done to also better support IIS.

-Steve W


Steve Lime wrote:
> Is this something you're interested in pursuing with or without funding? Perhaps this
> is another Summer of Code possibility?
> 
> Steve
> 
>>>> On 3/13/2008 at 6:26 PM, in message
> <EFDB9343-F039-4F18-9BA9-0B88DD7311E7 at gmail.com>, Howard Butler
> <hobu.inc at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Mar 13, 2008, at 4:38 PM, Steve Lime wrote:
>>
>>> Has anyone ever investigated the what Apache Module support would  
>>> take? Since fastcgi works reasonably well it might be a
>>> natural next step.
>> I remember danmo telling me YAGNI at FOSS4G in Minneapolis.  Part of  
>> my drive for wanting mod_mapserver was really to replace our homegrown  
>> crossplatform stuff with APR, which has way more users and devs than  
>> we do.  Apart from firing up a map draw inside of an Apache process  
>> and having it promptly explode my server :) (this was before we were  
>> so diligent with our big ass locking strategy), I didn't take things  
>> too far.  At the time, MapServer did not support being built as a  
>> shared object either, IIRC.
>>
>> What could mod_mapserver give us over just using fastcgi?
>> - Access to Apache-style configuration (some like and some hate this)
>> 	- URL specification with Location blocks (WMS answers foo/wms and WFS  
>> answers foo/wfs without rewrite/wrapper script hacks)
>> 	- MapServer "services" could be easily specified to encapsulate stuff  
>> that people tend to do system-wide now (error log location, GDAL  
>> variables like GDAL_CACHEMAX)
>> 	- Integration with Apache's error logging
>> - Access to Apache modules from within MapServer (for fun and twisted  
>> things)
>> 	- mpm prefork
>> 	- mod_auth and friends
>> 	- mod_proxy/mod_rewrite
>> 	- apr_memcached
>>
>> I think a mod_mapserver would be a fun project, and it would open up  
>> MapServer to a lot more "server" stuff.  I think a good place to start  
>> would be something like the URL/Location specification stuff and maybe  
>> hooking MapServer up to be able to talk to the mpm API.  You could  
>> even take it all the way and replace things like msStringToUpper with  
>> its Apache equivalents and make APR/APR-util a required library of  
>> MapServer (I highly doubt we've the stomach for it though).
>>
>> Howard
>> 	 
>>   
> 
> _______________________________________________
> mapserver-dev mailing list
> mapserver-dev at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-dev