[TangerineSDR] Web server to use on Local Host

[Rob Wiesler]

On Mon, Dec 02, 2019 at 21:17:53 +0000, Engelke, Bill wrote:
> I'd like to touch base with you on something  [if anyone else reading
> this has guidance on this question, please chime in]...
>
> On the Local Host (SBC), we need a web server.  I'm leaning toward
> Apache Tomcat. Do you see any reason why not to use Tomcat (version 8
> I suppose)? It seems to run quite well on the Odroid and I'm thinking
> the jsp environment will offer quite a bit of flexibility....      any
> thoughts?

Tomcat is fine, especially for a local-only web server, and for JSP it's
basically your only choice (*).  I suppose there aren't really any
problems with running a JSP-based server, but I usually run a
Python-based web server (mod_wsgi should work fine with Apache - I use
uwsgi (with or without nginx) at work).

The main benefit in using Python over Java is dependency reduction, as
Python is installed on basically all Debian-based systems already, and
OpenJDK is not.  Not installing OpenJDK saves about 160MB, which would
be significant on a system like the one I maintain at work, but may not
matter much for TangerineSDR.  OpenJDK also needs infrequent security
updates (again, this probably doesn't matter too much for us).

That said, if writing a web server in Python for an embedded system,
avoid Django.  It works fine on development systems, but we see too many
performance problems on my company's system (Flask is probably a better
choice, but I've not personally tried it).

I'd say that if the space savings aren't critical, there's nothing wrong
with using Tomcat.

*: This is me invoking Cunningham's Law.  If I'm wrong, please correct
   me.

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73 de AC8YV