Re: Apache::Request for CGI? (was: Re: A::Registry vs. mod_perlhandler philosophy)

[Perrin Harkins <pe...@elem.com>]

On Wed, 2003-07-02 at 20:38, Andrew Ho wrote:
> I totally agree with the fact that Apache::Registry can introduce many
> hard-to-debug-problems. I've had enough headaches debugging some of these
> issues myself. It's unclear to me, though, that there are unimaginably
> cool things you can get to in a "real" content handler that you can't get
> to from an Apache::Registry script

I would phrase it differently and say that there are nice things you can
do when you embrace the fact that you're in a persistent environment. 
You can do a lot of things in ways that are compatible with both CGI and
mod_perl, by checking the environment and acting appropriately, but it
can be a pain when you want to take advantage of cleanup handlers,
preloaded data, persistent connections, etc.

You can do all this from A::R, but once you've decided to write
something that is not going to work under CGI I can't see any reason to
use A::R anymore.  At that point, it's just an artificial construct that
adds complexity to your system.

> I have found that often the Apache::Registry functionality of not having
> to restart servers when simple scripts change is worth the potential of
> bugs tickled by the Apache::Registry sub-wrap approach.

People often say this.  I just don't see it.  Apache::Reload works just
as well.  My dev server restarts in about a second, so I always restart
it when I make a change just to feel confident that I'm not seeing any
residual effects from previous code.  The whole reload thing is not
perfect anyway, and people have had problems with A::R's reload when
working with code that has closures in it. 

My opinion is that you should use A::R if you need CGI (or SpeedyCGI,
etc.) compatibility, but use handlers otherwise.

- Perrin