- From: Tobie Langel <tobie@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 16:09:12 +0200
- To: ""Martin J. Dürst"" <duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp>
- Cc: public-test-infra <public-test-infra@w3.org>, Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org>, Anne van Kesteren <annevk@annevk.nl>, Phillips, Addison <addison@lab126.com>
On Friday, July 19, 2013 at 8:18 AM, "Martin J. Dürst" wrote:
> There is certainly a downside with tying in with Apache, but whatever we
> use, we'll be tying in with something, either some specific server or
> some specific software of ours, or so.
Yes.
> The possibility to just put the stuff on a server e.g. for testing in
> private before submitting tests looks important to me.
It's important to everyone, but complex testing scenarios (like dealing with HTTP headers) require server-side code. There's nothing we can do against that.
> To serve headers
> from a custom .header (or whatever we call it) file, we have to define
> the exact semantics of that file (see discussion about
> adding/replacing/removing headers, and that has just started), and have
> to make sure they get implemented ("picked up by the server" is easier
> said than done).
Mozilla has been able to do something similar, I don't know why we wouldn't. :)
> Because the implementations will differ from server to server, we have
> to make sure the implementations match. But then we start to be in the
> business of testing servers, were we intended to test clients.
I image this will be application-level code, so independent of the server.
> BTW, in Apache there is also the .asis format, which contains both
> headers and body. That would work for those cases where we want
> everything in a single file. See
> http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_asis.html. The downside is that
> then you can't test on a local file system because the headers get in
> the way. The upside is that it's a very clear format, and works with
> very little settings on Apache, and for other servers, it shouldn't be
> too difficult to make it work (although I'm not familiar with any other
> server than Apache); it would definitely be easier on other servers than
> .htaccess, which includes structured syntax and configuration options
> for many different Apache modules that are most probably difficult to
> mirror on other servers.
How would that work with binary files?
> Another idea would be to use a restricted subset of .htaccess
> functionality, but that would mean we would have to define that, and we
> would also have to check it.
Yes, that is indeed the other option.
--tobie
Received on Friday, 19 July 2013 14:09:21 UTC