On Mon, 07 Aug 2006 19:46:48 -0400, "Jonathan S. Shapiro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >On Mon, 2006-08-07 at 10:43 -0600, Nigel Williams wrote: >> With hurdNg and coyotos I would gladly see legacy support de-valued (even >> jettisoned). > >> A goal to support ... PHP. > >You do realize that these two statements are contradictory?
Not my intention, my original sentence was perhaps unclear due to lack of emphasis and elaboration: "...is for a scalable web-server implementation which offered an application environment _comparable_ (_preferably better_) to ASP or PHP." In other words once a web-server foundation with the desired characteristics (scalable, secure, robust, configurable, tunable, verified, extensible and so on) had been constructed, then in order to motivate wider-interest it would need to provide an environment capable of supporting something akin to the current style of web-applications, whether they be the current REST model or AJAX-style (should it become popular). The continuation-based model of Seaside (based on Smalltalk) is another approach worth consideration too. The exposed functionality need only be "comparable", at least in the sense that the development model that was surfaced was broadly familiar (to ease transition) to the legions of current web developers. "Preferably better" was intended to posit a web-server not shackled to the current model of serving files out of a hierarchical directory system, which hyperlinking, inheritance, or file inclusion attempts to re-cast (poorly) into a more relational-style navigational structure. Current web-server technology requires considerable expertise and resources to reach even a modest level of security. Providing a web-server that was secure out-of-the-box and which remained secure without constant patching would attract considerable interest. >PHP, Perl, Python, and friends require a depressingly large degree of >legacy support. They all want something POSIX-like. Actually, it's not >so much POSIX per se as certain *ideas* that are common to existing >systems. For sure, and given that these examples do not currently adhere (or in some cases could not adhere) to a capability security model built on a orthogonally persistent system I expect they would be left behind closeted in a virtualized sandbox. > >For example: try to imagine implementing any of these languages in a >system that does not have a conventional file system... I agree quite intriguing. It is interesting how many current web-server exploits rely on poor ".." directory navigation semantics which would never exist in such a system. The outlined scenario is proposed as a short-term deliverable, within n years, where n < 10. Ultimately I would hope delivering content over the internet could be supplanted by something more sophisticated and engaging like Croquet or its successors. nigwil _______________________________________________ L4-hurd mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/l4-hurd
