use Perl

one of the most interesting talks I heard at ApacheCon was Michael Radwin's HTTP Caching and Cache-busting for Content Publishers. In that talk he presented an (ingeniously simple) Apache C extension module called mod_images_never_expire.c.

I took that module, added some basic tests, and wrapped it up in an Apache-Test-based tarball, mod_images_never_expire-example.tar.gz .

in the below output, notice how mod_images_never_expire.c is compile and tested in a single command, all without invoking perl explicitly. make would simply compile the module, and sudo make install would install and activate the module for the specified Apache.

$ tar zxvf mod_images_never_expire-example.tar.gz
$ cd mod_images_never_expire-example/

$ export APACHE_TEST_APXS=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs
$ make test
perl Makefile.PL
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Writing Makefile for mod_images_never_expire
make[1]: Entering directory `/src/mod_images_never_expire-example'
make[1]: Nothing to be done for `makefile'.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/src/mod_images_never_expire-example'
make[1]: Entering directory `/src/mod_images_never_expire-example'
/perl/perl-5.8.5/bin/perl -Iblib/arch -Iblib/lib \
t/TEST  -clean
APACHE_TEST_GROUP= APACHE_TEST_HTTPD= APACHE_TEST_PORT= APACHE_TEST_USER= APACHE_TEST_APXS=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs \
/perl/perl-5.8.5/bin/perl -Iblib/arch -Iblib/lib \
t/TEST  -bugreport -verbose=0
make[2]: Entering directory `/src/mod_images_never_expire-example/c-modules'
cd images_never_expire && make mod_images_never_expire.so
make[3]: Entering directory `/src/mod_images_never_expire-example/c-modules/images_never_expire'
/usr/local /apache/bin/apxs -D APACHE1 -I/src/mod_images_never_expire-example/c-modules -c mod_images_never_expire.c
gcc -DLINUX=22 -DHAVE_SET_DUMPABLE -I/usr/include/gdbm -DUSE_HSREGEX -fpic -DSHARED_MODULE -I/usr/local/apache/include -I/src/mod_images_never_expire-example/c-modules -DAPACHE1  -c mod_images_never_expire.c
gcc -shared -o mod_images_never_expire.so mod_images_never_expire.o
make[3]: Leaving directory `/src/mod_images_never_expire-example/c-modules/images_never_expire'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/src/mod_images_never_expire-example/c-modules'
/usr/local/apache/bin/httpd  -d /src/mod_images_never_expire-example/t -f /src/mod_images_never_expire-example/t/conf/httpd.conf -D APACHE1 -D PERL_USEITHREADS
using Apache/1.3.32

waiting 60 seconds for server to start: ...
waiting 60 seconds for server to start: ok (waited 2 secs)
server localhost.localdomain:8529 started
t/01image.......ok
t/02nonimage....ok
All tests successful.
Files=2, Tests=24,  1 wallclock secs ( 1.35 cusr +  0.07 csys =  1.42 CPU)
[warning] server localhost.localdomain:8529 shutdown
make[1]: Leaving directory `/src/mod_images_never_expire-example'