Ann: WebObjects Adaptor for Apache 2.2.x

A number of people have expressed interest in using the WebObjects  
adaptor with Apache 2.2.x.  I finally have gotten a chance to sit  
down and work on it today.  I'm writing to let you know that it's  
available in the Project Wonder CVS repository.

The necessary changes turned out to be mostly minor updates to change  
calls to outdated/deprecated functions.  The biggest (and non- 
trivial) change was for SSL support.  It's been re-written to use  
Apache's mod_ssl module.

I've tested with MacOS X 10.4.7, Apache 2.2.2, with and without ssl  
support.  It works in all of my tests.

Configuration of the web server to work with the adaptor turned out  
to be surprisingly challenging, due to the new, very strict default  
access rules that ship in Apache 2.2.x httpd.conf file.  Once I  
discovered that, it was trivial to change the setting, but it's worth  
mentioning here to save some people a lot of frustration.

The new default configuration is:

<Directory />
     Options FollowSymLinks
     AllowOverride None
     Order deny,allow
     Deny from all
</Directory>

Your options are to comment out the last 2 lines of that block, or to  
override them in a VirtualHost block.  Just setting the usual  
Location  block didn't seem to work for me.

And, of course, either change the name of the WebObjectsAlias setting  
from /cgi-bin/WebObjects to <foo>/WebObjects or comment out the  
ScriptAlias definition for the /cgi-bin/ directory.

Other than these tips, it's pretty much the standard compilation and  
installation, and configuration.


1) Alter the make.config file in the Adaptors directory of the Wonder  
repository to reflect your apache installation setup.
2) Run make to build the Adaptor
3) Curse because of that one setting you forgot.  Fix it.
4) make clean; make
5) Install the mod_WebObjects module with apxs
6) Configure your httpd.conf and either link or copy the WebObjects  
directory from the standard location (if on MacOS X) to your new  
htdocs directory.
7) apachectl configtest; apachectl graceful
8) Test.
8) Curse again.  Change the httpd.conf file as necessary.
9) apachectl graceful.  Go to 8 as necessary.
10) Finally!  apachectl graceful

Enjoy your shiny new WO adaptor. :)

Travis