[Zope3-dev] Re: Need to get more involved in Web SIG (was Re: Fixing ZServer bugs?)

[Tres Seaver]

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Jim Fulton wrote:
> Tres Seaver wrote:
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>> Jim Fulton wrote:
>>> Stephan Richter wrote:
>> <snip>
>>
>>>> I agree with your assessment. It is extremely difficult to figure out which 
>>>> WSGI server fulfills Zope's criteria. In fact, I would suspect that only 
>>>> ZServer (Zope 2 and 3 version) does, because noone else has such strong 
>>>> requirements.
>>> What requirements?  If we have such requirements, I suggest we reevaluate them.
>>> *We do not want to be in the server business!*
>> We have performance and reliability expectations which come from running
>> mission-critical applications.  Lots of the rest of the folks interested
>> in servers don't have those requirements (yet, anyway), and hence aren't
>> motivated to address them in their externally-maintained server
>> implmentations.
> 
> I find it impossible to believe that others don't have such
> mission-critical requirements.

I'm inferring the lack from the tradeoffs others make in their server
implementations, e.g.:

  - Adding "shiny features" vs. improviing core HTTP performance

  - preferring "convention" over "configuration"

etc.  In many cases, the choices others make seem to indicate different
priorities. That is not to put those efforts down, but it does affect
our ability to reuse their stuff.

>> What is *worse* than maintaining our own server is trying to track
>> development on somebody else's, where their goals don't match ours. 
> 
> Sure.
> 
>  > I'm
>> guessing that the amount of effort required to "maintain" the Zope2
>> server per month is less than the aggregate time spent by the community
>> reading this thread. ;)
> 
> Probably, if someone was actually maintaining it and *if* Zope3 was
> using it.

How much "maintenance" do you imagine the Zope2 ZServer requires?  It is
already basically feature complete (the Keep-Alive bit which kicked off
this thread is a known exception), and nearly bug free.  The
collector[1] shows:

  - A couple of FTP-on-Solaris issues, reported against Zope 2.5.1 and
    never followed up (I plan to WONTFIX) these.

  - A two-and-a-half year old FCGI / PCGI issue which looked maybe
    invalid.  I *will* agree that FCGI / PCGI are no longer under any
    sort of maintenance, and are bitrotting.  I WONTFIXed that issue.

  - A nitpicky HTTP 1.1 compliance issue (Zope doesn't complain about
    a missing Host: header).

  - A memory consumption bug in the FTP server on large uplaods.

  - Another compliance error which is the result of a workaround for
    an Apache bug, long gone.

  - A feature request which even the OP admits is "potentially useless
    in the most common Zope configuration out there."

> If we find that WSGI is inferior to the Zope 2 server, then I certainly
> think that abandoning our various Zope 3 efforts is a reasonable
> alternative, although unattractive, since I'm not aware of anyone
> actively maintaining the Zope 2 server. I'd much rather
> leverage a larger effort.

There *isn't* a larger effort that I know of: the spec allows for
interop, but we need somebody to care for the other end of the pipe.

> Right now, we have no good basis for judging the server alternatives.

There is the anecdotal / empircal one, which is that most "large" /
high-traffic Zope sites are deployed successfully atop the Zope2
ZServer:  it "just works" for the use cases we need.

[1]
http://www.zope.org/Collectors/Zope/collector_contents?searching=yep&SearchableText=&status%3Alist%3Aignore_empty=Accepted&status%3Alist%3Aignore_empty=Deferred&status%3Alist%3Aignore_empty=New&status%3Alist%3Aignore_empty=Pending&status%3Alist%3Aignore_empty=visible&topics%3Alist%3Aignore_empty=ZServer


Tres.
- --
===================================================================
Tres Seaver          +1 540-429-0999          tseaver at palladion.com
Palladion Software   "Excellence by Design"    http://palladion.com
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