Hi Everybody,

So, last night, I started working on the next big major version of Dada Mail - v8!. I'm usually fairly conservative with my versioning, and only announce major versions when something huge gets changed. In this case I'm in the process of migrating Dada Mail to be CGI::Application-based. Right now, there's really no framework to speak of in Dada Mail!

Moving to CGI::Application is going to do a few cool things, most importantly it's gonna allow us to run Dada Mail as not just as CGI script, but will give us quick and easy support for FastCGI and with that: long-running, persistent processes (meaning a BIG performance boost!). That will be very cool, as it means that Dada Mail can run much more efficiently on busy sites. Even a host like Bluehost supports FastCGI, so the barrier to entry is super low.

I was a little concerned about how hard it was going to be to migrate to CGI::Application/Fast CGI - Dada Mail is a large app! With admittedly, some cobwebs in some of the code. I'm happy to report, I may have something running as early as tonight or tomorrow under FastCGI.

FastCGI has some positive traits: It's fairly robust and looks like it's supported in a lot of places. It's also easy to keep on supporting Dada Mail as a plain CGI app, if that's still all you need. There's shinier stuff available for Perl apps, and it's called PSGI - it's similar to WSGI for Python or or Rack for Ruby. Here's more about it:

        http://plackperl.org/

PSGI would give even greater flexibility and potentially speed for Dada Mail, and moving Dada Mail 8 to PSGI would be simple, once FastCGI support is done. Deployment may be another issue, as it's not as simple to start running the app (or putting the middleware/backend stuff up). For a seasoned pro, it could still be an option and I may experiment with that.

So, for the time being, that's going to be the only difference between v7 and v8 - FastCGI support, migrating to CGI::Application and potentially a walkthrough to get things running under PSGI. This may be the time I also drop the PlainText/Default backend, plus a few deprecated features/plugins, but that's to be seen.

Here's the branch I'm working on:

        https://github.com/justingit/dada-mail/tree/features-cgi_application_migration

More about FastCGI:

        http://www.fastcgi.com/drupal/

More about CGI::Application:

        http://cgi-app.org/
--

Justin J: Lead Dadaist.
url:         http://dadamailproject.com
email:    justin@PROTECTED
twitter:  @dadamail
skype:   leaddadaist

Dada Mail Announcements:
http://dadamailproject.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/dada_announce/








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