[AOLSERVER] Progress in Aolserver

[Maurizio Martignano]

Dear all,

                I’m the maintainer of the Windows Port of OpenACS.

 

Recently (22/07/2011) I got the CVS HEAD version of Aolserver and compiled it with Microsoft Visual Studio 10 for Windows 32 bit and Windows 64 bit.

 

I did this because I wanted to take profit of the mods introduced by Brian and Gustav to handle the uploading of files (objects) too large.

 

Before that I was using the Aolserver version included in the tar ball aolserver-4.5.1-src.tar.gz dated 2009-02-02.

 

Well… ehm... the version in the tar ball compiles and runs well under Windows…

 

Not so for the version under CVS HEAD: many of the changes introduced have been implemented with a careful eye only for *nix, and not for Windows.

By looking at the code I have the feeling that the interest in supporting Windows is fading down…

 

To have things in perspective… please go to the ]project-open[ web site, go to the download section and see how many people have downloaded the Windows version

and how many have downloaded any of the other version…

 

I’m not a big organization, I cannot influence you, but I have to say I am very sorry and sad for this… evolution…. Being so small I don’t have the energy to look at all your changes and additions and make sure they work properly on Windows. If this trend continues I will be forced to generate a sort of fork and incorporate, add the new changes, the new additions to my code base on a case by case basis, driven by the actual needs.

 

Any opinion?

 

Thanks in advance,

Maurizio

 

 

--
AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/

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[Jeff Rogers]

Maurizio Martignano wrote:

> Well� ehm... the version in the tar ball compiles and runs well under
> Windows�

>
> Not so for the version under CVS HEAD: many of the changes introduced
> have been implemented with a careful eye only for *nix, and not for Windows.
>
> By looking at the code I have the feeling that the interest in

> supporting Windows is fading down�

Speaking only for myself...

Keeping the windows port current is valuable, both to support more
users, and to force proper coding practices. The problem isn't so much
lack of interest as lack of capability. I am a unix developer, and I
don't have the time or money (looks like $500 for Visual Studio) to set
up a proper windows development environment. That said, it's possible
that many of the compilation problems are quite simple to address when
faced with the error messages, provided the build is simple to set up.

> To have things in perspective� please go to the ]project-open[ web site,

> go to the download section and see how many people have downloaded the
> Windows version
>

> and how many have downloaded any of the other version�

I'm curious, but I didn't see anywhere to view these numbers - do you
have a direct link?

> I�m not a big organization, I cannot influence you, but I have to say I
> am very sorry and sad for this� evolution�. Being so small I don�t have

> the energy to look at all your changes and additions and make sure they
> work properly on Windows. If this trend continues I will be forced to
> generate a sort of fork and incorporate, add the new changes, the new
> additions to my code base on a case by case basis, driven by the actual
> needs.

AFAIK AOL abandoned all support of AOLserver several years ago, so
there's no big organization involved; your voice is as loud as any other.

-J

[Dossy Shiobara]

I speak only for myself ...

I personally have thoughtfully cared for the Windows support in
AOLserver -- once upon a time, I had built the Windows binaries that
some folks were using. Through discussions I had with Jim Davidson, the
new build mechanism for AOLserver 4.5.x was meant to make building
AOLserver on Windows easier than it had been in the past.

I suspect that any recent changes to AOLserver which cause it to no
longer build cleanly on Windows is likely an act of ignorance (i.e., not
knowing what will or won't work on Windows) than an act of malice (i.e.,
not caring about Windows). My guess is that the folks who contribute
changes do not have the means to test their changes on a Windows platform.

It would be fantastic if the people who use AOLserver on Windows could
port the changes such that they also work on Windows, either by
replacing changes with more portable code, or providing the necessary
platform-specific implementation surrounded by #ifdef __WIN32__ as
needed, etc.

On 8/3/11 1:19 PM, Maurizio Martignano wrote:
> By looking at the code I have the feeling that the interest in

> supporting Windows is fading down�
>
> [...]
>
> Any opinion?

[Maurizio Martignano]

Hello all,
Some few clarifications, I am afraid I wasn't clear.

The compilation in itself was rather simple and went almost ok.

The issue was in the behavior.... in the testing....

Some of the code, eg, function calls to the networking parts and so on, are
working in the tar ball version, but cause the system to hang forever in CVS
HEAD version.

For the time being, I need to make a delivery rather quickly, I added Brian
and Gustaf mods about the upload of large objects to the version in the tar
ball, leaving all the other changes out.

I might have a look at the other changes, but this is first of all a testing
and debugging activity, very time consuming... I will come back to the
community when I find something....

For Jeff, here you can see the numbers:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/project-open/files/project-open/V3.5/

Ciao,
Maurizio

[Jim Davidson]

Hi,

As Dossy mentioned, we spent some time trying to support the win32 port. That included a goofy Tcl-based config thing (which also helped to verify a workable Tcl installation) and a dose of ifdef's and compatibility code. In general, the AOLserver code base is decidedly Unix -- any Win32 specific stuff is made to make Win32 look like Unix (i.e., the thread library, directly reading emulations, etc).

I could take a look again but suspect it will take me a day or more just to the muck of Win32 development working again on my Mac. Given the quality of the various virtualization stuff (VMware, Virtual Box, etc.), would it be smarter to just double down on Unix and spend some time with some bundled Unix-in-box for Windows type installs?

-Jim

[Maurizio Martignano]

Hi Jim,

Once again I'll take ]project-open[ as example.

Please look in here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/project-open/files/project-open/V3.5/

How big is the Windows Installer (which installs on both Windows 64 and
Windows 32 systems)?

How big is the VMware Image?

Well in some companies/organizations (believe it or not) Linux is not an
accepted platform. Even a VMware appliance with Linux on it won't be
accepted because to maintain it the company is obliged to acquire personnel
knowledgeable on the system.
So if you want to spread the users base of your OpenACS/Aolserver based
application, having it running also on Windows may be very helpful.

Cheers,
Maurizio

Hi,

-Jim

>> supporting Windows is fading down.

[Jim Davidson]

Yup -- seems like it's worth keeping the Win32/Win64 port going. It does muck up the code a bit with ifdef's and there are a few weirdnesses with Windows to work around but I suppose enough effort has been done in the past (if not recently) that it wouldn't be too tough to maintain.

-Jim

[Maurizio Martignano]

If that is ok,
I am willing to take "the burden" to look at / look after these
"weirdnesses"...

Ciao,