nfapws 0.3.2

What are Fapws2 and Fapws3 about ?

Fapws1, Fapws2 and Fapws3 are “internal” project’s name. The rename correspond to a full re-write.

In the begining I made Fapws1, a Python extension based on the Apricot code. Then, quickly comes the need to have much more features in it, and I’ve called it Fapws2. Fapws1 has never been published. Fapws2 is rebuild based on the http library of libevent. Works great, but I’ve been forced to modify the evhttp_handle_request. Despite seevral mails to the libevent mailing list, no one was agreed to accept my patch to the http code of libevent. Thus, or use use it with libevent <1.3e or you must change the code of libevent before using it for Fapws. This is not a so good way of working ;-(. Than comes Fapws3, a rebuild of Fapws2 without dependencies to http’s API of libevent. At that moment Marc Lehmann posts, in the libevent mailinglist, a mail describing the creation of a “new” and optimized event’s library similar to libevent. Because the code was much more clean to me and because the documentation provided

http://pod.tst.eu/http://cvs.schmorp.de/libev/ev.pod

was very clear, I’ve decided to give it a try.

Support for Fapws2 will be strictly limited to bug fixing. My current work will be focused on Fapws3.

Why a new python web server ?

In that case, the usual question is why an new one ? In short, the answer is because it sounds that Apricot is not more maintained, and because Medusa and Twisted can not go as fast as Apricot. Indeed, after several pure performance tests it appears that, thanks to the libevent library used in Apricot, is the fastest python web server.

But that not the only reason. Personnally, I prefer event’s web server. Indeed, such architecture gives more performant web server and with a much more limited memory foot print. You can easly install them a memory limited machines (like VDS for example).

Philosophy:

Fapws must stay the most simple web server and the fastest. Thus the core of the application is quite limited. Every additional feature will be placed inside a “contrib” sub-directory. This is valontary for disk space “foot print” reasons. Thus Fapws must also facilitate the disk utilisation.

Pre-requisit:

• Python with header files, version >= 2.4, (in Debian, sudo aptitude install python python-dev)

• Libev with header files, version >= 3.49 (in Debian, sudo aptitude install libev3 libev-dev)

WARNING:

To avoid conflicts with the previous version (called Fapws2), better to remove it before installation of the new one.

Install fapws:

sudo easy_install nfapws