Redline Smalltalk: The Journey So Far
Video of James and my talk at Smalltalk Solutions on where we are currently with Redline Smalltalk has been posted.…
Setting up a Monticello repository using Nginx
How Hard Could It Be? Not very hard; this little monkey who is more interested in bananas did it in no time flat. Setting up and running your own private Monticello repository is something almost any Smalltalker should be able to accomplish; as long as your aren’t completely command line and systems administration phobic, you should be done with my directions within half an hour. Installing Nginx with WebDAV Support Most prepackaged binary version of Nginx don’t support WebDAV.…
Using FastCGI with Nginx and Seaside
Why FastCGI a.k.a Why Not Reverse Proxy? I’ve previously written about why I prefer reverse proxying to FastCGI. I still believe all those points, however there are certain Seaside deployment situations where FastCGI is currently preferable to reverse proxying. If you are deploying your Seaside application to run on Gemstone’s GLASS then you should give FastCGI serious consideration. The current swazoo adapter that you use when proxying to GLASS is nowhere near as battle tested as the FastCGI adapter.…
Reverse Proxying to Seaside with Nginx
Why Reverse Proxy a.k.a Why Not FastCGI? Transparency. FastCGI setups are opaque. You can’t easily test all aspects of it. Unless you write your own FastCGI client, debugging configuration problems can be very difficult. Lets imagine for a moment that are trying to debug a problem with your application– the issue might be in the front end server or it might be in the Seaside application server. When you are using FastCGI, all your interactions with your application server are routed through the front end server which acts as a client for you.…
Faking a https client for GLASS
So, you are humming along developing your GLASS hosted Seaside application. If you are following the proscribed development path, your application is running in Pharo and you’ve started porting it to GLASS when a problem arises: Your application needs to make calls out to a secure web service (merchant processor etc) but, GLASS doesn’t have a native https client. The Pharo cryptography package implements an https client which you could port to Gemstone, but the process model it uses doesn’t map nicely and you have better things to do with your time.…