Re: Adding support for "plackup" and similar web server tools to git-instaweb

On Mon, 3 May 2010, Eric Wong wrote:

Jakub Narebski [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

The problem is that contrary to other web servers that can be used by
git-instaweb, (namely apache2, lighttpd, mongoose and webrick), the
'plackup' utility is configured using command line options, and not
via configuration file (well, one can use configuration file, but it
depends on the web server run from plackup).

How should one go with adding support for such httpd?  My first attempt
was putting full command line into 'httpd' in resolve_full_httpd():

+       *plackup*)
+               # plackup is configured via command-line options
+               bind=
+               test x"$local" = xtrue && bind="--host=127.0.0.1"
+               httpd="$httpd --port=$port $bind --app=$fqgitdir/gitweb/app.psgi"
+               ;;

[...]

quoted

So how should one go with adding support for new web server to git-instaweb,
that is configured via command line options (--port, --host) and not via
config file?

How about generating a small shell script that wraps plackup with the
appropriate command-line options?

 RFC1925 - The Twelve Networking Truths                      1 April 1996
 
 2. The Fundamental Truths

         (6a) (corollary). It is always possible to add another level of
              indirection.

Just kidding...


More seriously, even currently in git-instaweb the 'httpd' variable
contains web server invocation *with options* (see the case of apache2
and lighttpd, where resolve_full_httpd() ensures that 'httpd' ends
with '-f' in such case.  Using 'httpd' variable to be plackup-with-options
naturally follows from such example.

Shell script (plackup.sh?  gitweb-plackup.sh?  instaweb-plackup.sh?)
might be good idea, though.  Note that we have to create gitweb.psgi
(or app.psgi) CGI-to-PSGI wrapper (and to serve static files like 
gitweb.css) anyway by git-instaweb.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland