[hunchentoot-devel] Re: Current development

[Edi Weitz]

On Sat, 14 Jun 2008 07:21:05 +0200, Lars Rune Nøstdal <larsnostdal at gmail.com> wrote:

> A major problem is global variables.

As you already mentioned, this will be partly addressed by upcoming
changes.  Still, I'd be interested in how far this is really a "major
problem" when you try to implement certain things.  You aren't forced
to use the special variables, are you?

> Also, this means handling of a round-trip cycle cannot be hardcoded
> into a single function/method or into a single path of execution (a
> single thread). Using things like UNWIND-PROTECT makes the path of
> execution static; "when thread ends close the stream" (but we, well
> I, don't want this!).

The goal of the current development obviously is to make Hunchentoot
more flexible and at the same time to give its users more rope to hang
themselves.  In the end, it will still be a web server, though, with
an eye on simplicity and backwards compatibility, it won't become an
all singing and dancing General Problem Solver.  I hope you won't be
disappointed.

(Just out of curiosity, are there general purpose web servers out
there where one single request is not handled within one
thread/process?  I'm aware that Apache for example has a pretty
sophisticated model of providing different ways of hooking into the
request handling architecture.  Still, I think, the thread that
accepts the request will always be the one which is in charge of
sending the reply and cleaning up, or am I wrong?)