Forum OpenACS Development: Re: Is it time for NaviServ Again?

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12: Re: Is it time for NaviServ Again? (response to 1)
Posted by Jon Griffin on 08/02/07 07:00 PM
Andrew,
You have been around long enough to remember the other times this BS happened. It is possibly worse now.

I am not even sure anyone is working on AOLServer at all anymore. The attitude of the developers sucks, code is getting worse. Sound familiar.


There was a lot of discussion internally about whether or not to support virtual servers going forward.

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NaviServer has been sitting at 4.99.1 on sourceforge for many months, but I admit I don't know enough about current plans to make a decision.

I will try to contact Vlad and see what the plans are. At least it is an open development environment with a plan going forward. With OACS support, it could be even better and it is not like they have some fly by night developers that got mad and forked.

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14: Re: Is it time for NaviServ Again? (response to 12)
Posted by Vlad Seryakov on 08/03/07 04:05 AM
The reason it is being in 4.99.1 for too long time is just we wanted to include all documentation and then real life took over and we've been discussing release for the last couple months already, there are still some things to be complete but overall it is very stable. I use it daily in multiple installations and it is being used in many production sites around the world. Ask Zoran, he uses it for their product for a long time already. Tcl API does not change, the one of the major goals is to keep backward compatibility, may be not with everything but at least on Tcl level.

As for going in different direction than AS, that is true, we ported some stuff from AS 4.5 like new adp parser, pools, Tcl initialization but adjusting to our vision. Overall i think it is much better server than AS 4./4.5, it has support for many many features, a lot of modules and integrated many commands so no need for extra modules like nscache, nsha1, upload statistics for huge uploads, writers support for delivering huge files without using conn threads, embedded virtual hosting, no need for config or server restart to add new virtual hosts.

Also, docs are mostly up-to-date, for quick overview see:

http://www.crystalballinc.com/vlad/software/naviserver//index.oss?&tab=docs

Sorry for advertising, i did not post here for a long time.

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15: Re: Is it time for NaviServ Again? (response to 14)
Posted by Tom Jackson on 08/03/07 05:02 AM
Vlad,

Thanks for posting. My concerns were not intended to cause a switch to NaviServer, I don't know anything about it. I am interested in the seriousness of the developers, and AOLserver stock just went way down for me. Is it possible for you to describe here what is NaviServer? I will follow your link, but what is the diff with AOLserver and why did OACS need to be ported to NaviServer? Sorry, but porting sounds like a major process.

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16: Re: Is it time for NaviServ Again? (response to 15)
Posted by Vlad Seryakov on 08/03/07 05:37 AM
No porting is needed, i am using apps there i was running on AS 3.5, then 4.0. Some API changed but mostly old Tcl API is the same, we just have many new commands.

Naviserver is fork of AS 4.0.11 but this year we ported some stuff from AS 4.5, mostly pools, tasks, new ns_http command but NS has new ns_https/lightweight nsssl module.

As for seriousness, Zoran relies its business on it, i am using it as swiss knife and actually at my new company we are using it for backend/server parts, i am not sure how Stephen relies on it. And, this is opensource project, we do not have many commiters but this is because of lack of popularity, we never intended to fight for aolserver developers or lure them from AS.

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18: Re: Is it time for NaviServ Again? (response to 16)
Posted by Gustaf Neumann on 08/03/07 10:58 AM
Well,

concerning "no porting is needed": well, naviserver 4.99.1 did not work out of the box with openacs due to interface changes between aolserver and naviserver. See for a summary, what was necessary for getting naviserver 4.99.1 to work with openacs:
https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=351115
see for example these two changes.
http://cvs.openacs.org/cvs/openacs-4/packages/acs-tcl/tcl/request-processor-procs.tcl?r1=1.82.2.3&r2=1.82.2.4
http://cvs.openacs.org/cvs/openacs-4/packages/acs-tcl/tcl/utilities-procs.tcl?r1=1.83.2.4&r2=1.83.2.5
Also openacs-4.5 required a few changes in openacs when it came out.

With the various head versions of naviserver, i had in the past problems with the loading semantics, ns_cache and encodings. All of these problems are fixable to work with minimal invasive changes with openacs, but i don't expect the naviserver head version to work out of the box right now.

Concerning seriousness: i have no doubts about seriousness of the naviserver team, naviserver is here to stay.

Vlad, is there a reason that the nice documentation is your site and not on the naviserver sourceforge site?

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28: Re: Is it time for NaviServ Again? (response to 18)
Posted by Vlad Seryakov on 08/03/07 05:31 PM
SF CVS and wiki is sooo slowww i could not stand it anymore an d put a copy of files into my personal web site. Plus, i am running naviserver, so using PHP wiki to promote naviserver/Tcl is not the best option in my opinion.

We've decided to minimize maintenance efforts still to use SF and CVS but i am personally do like it but this is in no way some kind of fork or anything pulling from the project, just faster access.