Apache under Windows Page 6

     #!/usr/bin/perl

or
     #!/bin/sh

Windows has no concept of looking for the #! (''shebang'') line, but

does everything based on the file extension.

Apache lets you do things either way, as you like. If you are aiming

for platform independence, it is very handy to be able to use the #!

line, so that you can run your CGI programs on your Windows machine,

and also on your Unix machine. But, if you are developing CGI programs

only for Windows, then perhaps this does not matter to you, and you

want it to execute based on the file extension.

The ScriptInterpreterSource directive tells Apache which one of these

you prefer. The default value, script, tells Apache to look for a #!

line to find out what interepreter to use to execute the program.

Setting it to registry will cause Apache to look in the registry for

the association between the file extension and a script interpreter to

run it.

Tip: If you will be using Perl CGI programs, and want to maintain some

level of portability between your Unix machines and your NT machines,

you will want to install Perl in a location on your NT machine that is

the same as on your Unix machines. For example, on my Linux machines,

Perl is located at /usr/bin/perl and so every Perl program that I write

begins with "#!/usr/bin/perl". So, when I install Perl on an NT machine,

instead of installing it in the default location, which is c:perl for

ActivePerl (http://www.activestate.com/), I install it in C:usr so

that the Perl executable is located at /usr/bin/perl. This allows me to

write code on my Windows machine, and then move it, without changes, to

my Linux machine, and have it run there. And vice versa.

Directives that don't work on NT (or, at least, work differently)

Many of the directives that work differently under NT are the ones you'd

expect -- notably the ones dealing with forking child processes. As discussed

above, NT does not use fork, but uses threads, to accomplish what Unix-type

systems use fork for.

There are some other directives that you might want to use, but which you

will need to think about a little differently on NT.

Some of these are just my observations. Perhaps someone can correct me on

these.

UserDir


Users on NT have user directories, but, as the comments in httpd.conf

note,

      # Under Win32, we do not currently try to determine the home directory of
      # a Windows login, so a format such as that below needs to be used.  See
      # the UserDir documentation for details.
      #
      UserDir "C:/httpd/users/"

What this means is that you should just use UserDir in the normal way,

except that you must specify an absolute path.

Under Unix, specifying a relative path causes Apache to append that

path to the home directory of the user specified. That is, if the URL

requested is http://www.rcbowen.com/~rbowen and UserDir is set to

'public_html', Apache will attempt to serve files from

/home/rbowen/public_html.

However, on Win32, there's no nice way to figure out a user's home

directory, so that syntax is unavailable.


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