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Posted Thu 4 Mar, 2021; updated Fri 5 Mar, 2021.
I'm planning my next move on the development of SpaceBeans (my Gemini server, serving this same capsule). I have a number of ideas, but none of them are essential, as in "the server is already useful to me".
I have some "minor" features that I may implement when I feel inspired, but the big one that is missing is some sort of support for applications.
I didn't want to say "CGI", because is not just that. Last night, for example, I run some experiments embedding a Scala interpreter, and even playing with the Nashorn Javascript interpreter (surprisingly fast!); but I discarded the idea for security reasons.
I mean, I'm sure it is possible to make that work in a safe way, but I don't like the amount of time that may take. For example, the first thing I tried was to run a "System.exit(1)" and... yes, it finished the server.
Dealing with security managers, class filters and such, doesn't sound too much fun (and I'm not confident enough to pull it off). So, what are the other options?
CGI is probably the easiest one, but I don't think the JVM and its footprint (my server uses 128MB) is a good match for a fork + exec strategy.
So I'm currently undecided between SCGI and FastCGI. Considering that SCGI is very simple, I may start with that one and end implementing both.
And that takes me to the next item on the list: client certificates.
Again, not essential, but supporting them opens the door to a lot of interesting applications. For example, look a this forum that Michael Spector has posted to the mailing list:
Hydepark: a discussion forum app for Gemini
It is hosted on a Raspberry Pi, so give it another chance later if it is currently off-line.
Oh, about the Gemini mailing list.
I've been on that mailing list less than a week. I'd like to know about changes on the spec, so I can implement them in my server; but there's this noisy troll and some "intensity" associated to some topics that is not really my cup of tea. I filtered the troll, but there's still that desire to always have the last word on mailing lists that makes them hard to read. It must be that I'm getting old for flames!
I'll give it more time. There are things worth reading, like Michael's post; but I may end filtering anything that is not an announcement. I guess that's what I really want: an moderated announcement-only mailing list.
Anyway, writing this convinced me to give SCGI a go!
Update: I'm off the list already. The spec process is tracked on GitLab now, and there's an RSS feed for the changes. I'll check the list archive every now and then, and perhaps that way I can still have part of the good stuff.