lighttpd/doc/features.txt

===============
progress report
===============

:Author: Jan Kneschke
:Date: $Date: 2004/11/03 22:26:05 $
:Revision: $Revision: 1.2 $

:abstract:
  This document tries to track the requested features and
  the release when they have been implemented.

.. meta::
  :keywords: lighttpd, features

.. contents:: Table of Contents

Description
===========

The document was inspired by a mail from David Phillips:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=thttpd&m=108051453226692&w=2

It is used to see what is still missing and what is already done. ::

  zell@zell.best.vwh.net writes:
  > Now that the author has made the source code available, I am
  > considering installing and testing the latest version.  From a
  > quick glance, it seems to support most/all of the features of
  > Premium thttpd and Zeus.

  If you think it compares to Zeus, then you've obviously never used Zeus.

  lighttpd is currently the only non-blocking open source web server to
  support FastCGI responders and that's worthwhile.

  The documentation is lacking.  Comments in the configuration file do not
  make up for a complete manual.

Constantly improving. ::

  The configuration syntax is overly complex, like Apache.  There is no .htaccess
  support.

.htaccess support is not planed yet. ::

  There is only one server.  You cannot have a separate configuration for each
  virtual server.  This would seem to be especially problematic when doing
  SSL.

Works since 1.3.0. ::

  There is no SSI support.  Zeus has full recursive SSI support.  Output from
  a FastCGI program can get run through the SSI interpreter.  SSI can also do
  virtual includes recursively.

SSI works since 1.2.4. ::

  Request logging is not configurable.  Zeus supports fully configurable
  access logging, plus a binary version of CLF that save space.

1.2.6 adds Apache-like logfile config. ::

  Access control only allows authentication via username and password.  There
  is no way to allow or deny based in IP address.

planed for 1.3.x ::

  The request rewriting appears to only allow regex substitutions.  Zeus has a
  simple, yet powerful, request rewrite language.



  There is no support for FastCGI authorizers.  These are very useful for high
  traffic sites that require complex authentication schemes or that store
  authorization information in a central database.

since 1.1.9. ::

  There is no bandwidth throttling support.  Zeus does bandwidth throttling
  correctly (i.e. unlike past versions of thttpd) and can throttle on a
  per-subserver (thttpd-style virtual hosts) basis.

since 1.3.8. ::

  There is no ISAPI support.  ISAPI is an elegant, open API that allows
  modification of web server behavior.  While it isn't strictly necessary for
  an open source web server, it nice to have a documented, consistent API,
  rather than having to manually patch the server.

If someone requests it it might be implemented. ::

  There is no web based interface.  Zeus has a complete web based interface
  for everything, including a powerful feature of configuring multiple virtual
  servers at once.

That is something that should be a special feature of Zeus. :) ::

  There is no support for mapping certain URLs to specific filesystem paths.

since 1.2.6 ::

  There is no referring checking.  This is incredibly important to prevent
  hotlinking of bandwidth intensive media types (images, movies, etc.).

we have something better: mod_secdownload. And if someone wants referer
checking we have a condition in the config for it since 1.2.9 ::

  Zeus has a lot of features that lighttpd doesn't have, but I only mentioned
  the ones I care about and use.

  --
  David Phillips <david@acz.org>
  http://david.acz.org/