First Release
v10 first released just before XMas 1994. This was an attempt to learn about MacTCP programming, BOA apps, and provide a second http server for Mac which was small, easy to setup and fast. Writing httpd4Mac alowed me to achieve all those goals together. I never really intended to do much with it except get it working to some degree, then release the source code.
However many people have sent me mail about it asking for things to be fixed and new features to be added. When time allows I do this and the rest of this page is the history of bug fixes and feature improvments.
Later versions
FIXES/IMPROVEMENTS FROM 1.0a TO 1.1a (Released 17 Jan 1995)
- You now get a notification telling you when httpd is running and ready for access.
- An option to limit the life of cached items is now in the prefs file.
- Bug fixed that meant if you requested a URL with lower 'ASCII-value' than the first request of the day it crashed. By ASCII-value I mean comparing the ASCII values of the individual characters as you would if you were sorting alphabetically.ie 'bug' is less than 'home' and 'help' is less than home 'home'
FIXES/IMPROVEMENTS FROM 1.1a TO 1.2a (Released 28 Feb 1995)
- A bug that caused a bus error when httpd4Mac quits is gone.
- HEAD method is now supported
- MIME support
- Access logging is done, with DNS lookup if needed.
- URLs are no longer case sensitive.
- Change of format of debugging file, more messages added. Each line now peceeded with function name
- Some general improvements in the way some things are done.
v122d Fixes a few bugs from released version:-
- Cache life option did not always work correctly
- Even when it did you had to reload page several times to get the changes
- In addition to that, there was always the off chance (due to concurrency quirks) you still might not get the changes
- Fixed a memory leak which occurred when non-existent URLs are requested
- Fixed a problem wih long MIME types eg application/mac-binhex40 (I found that one setting up this server)
- In addition some fixes have been added that help prevent the debug log being filled with the same message over and over again.
- Fixed a bug that caused loss of some log info at quit time.
In addition an incompatability with 'autodoubler' has been flagged. Make sure the files you wish to serve are uncompressed.
A bug report has been sent in, indicating a memory leak occurring when requests are cancelled. This should be fixed with v123dx
v123d9 adds the following features/bug fixes. (Some of these bugs were only present in development versions eg 123d1 to v123d8)
- Error logging
- Send Timeout option (use 'send_timeout' followed by number of seconds in prefs file) This is probably more use to me that anyone else, but it was easy to put in.
- Option to allow httpd4Mac to check creation and modification dates of files against cache before serving. Use 'cache_check' in prefs file, with either 'on' or 'off'. If switched 'off' httpd4Mac works exactly as before, using cache_life option. If cache_check is on then two checks are made of the cache, firstly if the file dates match the cache and also how old the item is (cache_life option). This makes development using httpd4Mac a bit easier. This will slow down the service when this option is on.
- Bug fix in DNS code that meant lookups could get launched from Interupt time. This would cause the Mac to freeze.
- Bug fix that meant connections dropped or cancelled at just the wrong time, could leave tcp streams 'dangling', waiting forever to be closed.
- Bug fix that caused 'Network Error 14' message from Netscape Clients.
- Prefs file is protected and cannot be downloaded.
- Bug fix on a development version that stopped anything being downloaded (sorry about that !)
- Bug fix, prefs files were being created with wrong line termination characters and therefore unreadable by httpd
- Bug fix stops httpd complaining the prefs file it created is out of date.
- Bug fix meant some accesses were logged as errors although they completed OK
In addition the work for porting to Native PPC has ben done, but some debugging needs to be done before this will be available.
Release v13b (20 October 1995) is basically v123d9 with the extra following bug fixes:-
- MIME Types of up to 64 characters in length are now allowed.
- The 'send_timeout' option works now (whoops !)
- The prefs file can no longer be downloaded.
Further versions will hopefully offer some or all of the following features:-
- Built in imagemapping.
- Ability to create your own error messages
- Handle aliases (allows users to create their own WWW pages)
- File protection, based on client IP number
- Dynamic allocation of TCP resources according to server load.
- Option to allow URLs of folders turned into an HTML directory listing
- Remote control of server
- URL redirection
Bill Melotti 11 Aug 1995
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