Beta testers needed for a high performance Python application server

[John Nagle]

Graham Dumpleton wrote:
> Yes that is a viable option, as still are existing fastcgi solutions
> for Apache, lighttpd and nginx.

    Fast cgi is a good technology, but it's not well documented or
well supported.  For some reason, the Apache people don't like it.
It used to be part of the Apache distribution, but that ended years
ago.

    It's more reliable than using things like mod_python, where you have
application code running in the web server's address space.  That creates both
security problems and robustness problems.  If an fcgi process
crashes, it is automatically replaced by a fresh copy of the program
at the next request.  Other activity in progress is not affected.
Also, fcgi processes are reloaded after some number of requests,
so minor memory leaks won't choke the system over time.

    The main problem is that the documentation is terrible, and the
monitoring and administrative tools are absent.  Little problems
include the fact that if you put an .fcgi file in the CGI directory,
it's run silently, and inefficiently, in CGI mode.  This is because
Apache has CGI built into it at a level below the level at which it
recognizes other files.

				John Nagle