Hi Ryan!
For the single-threaded non-blocking server in Guile, you have to make sure at least 3 steps:
1. set socket to non-blocking
2. enable suspended ports to prepare delimited-continuation powered coroutine
3. designed your own scheduler

Even in the single thread, you can handle requests concurrently because of the coroutine based on delimited-continuation.

Of course you may enhance it with thread pool.


Best regards.


On Mon, Mar 25, 2024 at 4:04 AM Ryan Raymond <rjraymond@oakland.edu> wrote:
Hello, all.
I was able to build a non-blocking web-server using network sockets. However, the existing guile web/server.scm implementation is single-threaded and therefore blocking, which is sub-optimal for some use-cases.

I suggest we slightly modify the server logic to have an optional #:blocking? [bool] parameter which would enable behavior in line with the following excerpt from my own code. Obviously some changes would be made to methodology and code style, but you get the picture.

(define (listen sock)
  (let* (
    (client-connection (accept sock))
    (client-details (cdr client-connection))
    (client (car client-connection)))
    (begin-thread
      (sigaction SIGPIPE SIG_IGN)
      (handle client)
      (close client))
    ))

This shouldn't cause any backwards-compatibility issues since it's optional, but the specifics of web/server.scm might cause problems.
Let me know what you think!
Ryan