The config.h-interface has proven to be very effective for a lot of
suckless tools, but it just does not make too much sense for a web
server like quark.
$ quark
If you run multiple instances of it, you want to see in the command line
(or top) what it does, and given the amount of options it's logical to
just express them as options given in the command line.
It also is a problem if you can modify quark via the config.h,
contradicting the manual. Just saying "Well, then don't touch config.h"
is also not good, as the vhost and map options were only exposed via
this interface.
What is left in config.h are mime-types and two constants relating to
the incoming HTTP-header-limits.
In order to introduce these changes, some structs and safe utility
functions were added and imported from OpenBSD respectively.
And many other things, too many to list here. For example, it now
properly logs uds instead of erroring out.
Separating concerns in many places definitely improves the readability.
The (c)-symbol has become more of a remnant after the Berne convention
has been signed. Given the ISC exploits some simplifications introduced
with the Berne convention, it just makes sense to drop this relict as
well and just state our Copyright without much ado about nothing.
https://opensource.org/licenses/ISC
I noticed that the data structures didn't allow a flexible handling of
the code while trying to extend it to support if-modified-since-responses.
To tackle this, I refactored the data structures and proceeded to
rewrite the server from the ground up, implementing all present features
plus fixing a lot of bugs and introducing the 304 header handling as
requested by many people.
Please report bugs if you find them.
While at it, I refactored the build system as well and updated all
surrounding files respectively.
Roughly 700 LOC (half of the old quark on the Hiltjo branch) in size,
this rewrite supports partial content and other good stuff that will
make it fun again to use quark for simple static purposes.
The error checking is rigorous and strict and it will report proper
error codes back to the client whenever there was a problem or the
request was invalid in some way.
A cool feature is the support for listening on a UNIX-domain socket,
which will in the long run allow us to solve problems with virtual hosts
and other things in separate programs. But until then, this should be
robust enough for most use-cases.
This resets quark's version to 0, but this was no problem as there
haven't been any quark releases yet.
Feedback is appreciated.
It was sad to see that quark never got the attention it deserved in my
opinion. However, there were good reasons why that was the case.
The project lost focus by trying to add CGI support, which in all
fairness worked only half of the time.
For the rest of the use cases, a static server to make it dead simple to
publish a directory, it was also pretty bad, given it does not support
partial content. Seeking in a mp3 was impossible and it was very
frustrating.
Long ago we discussed in the team how exciting it would be to test out
new concepts of having a web server that listens on a UNIX-domain
socket, potentially allowing new concepts for realizing virtual hosts
and other things.
It took me half a year to make the decision to rewrite quark, so it is
now time to purge the repo and push the initial commit.
