mod_speedycgi 2.22

mod_speedycgi speeds up perl scripts by running them persistently.

SpeedyCGI is a way to run perl scripts persistently, which can make them run much more quickly. A script can be made to to run persistently by changing the interpreter line at the top of the script from:

#!/usr/bin/perl

to
#!/usr/bin/speedy

After the script is initially run, instead of exiting, the perl interpreter is kept running. During subsequent runs, this interpreter is used to handle new executions instead of starting a new perl interpreter each time. A very fast frontend program, written in C, is executed for each request. This fast frontend then contacts the persistent Perl process, which is usually already running, to do the work and return the results.

By default each perl script runs in its own Unix process, so one perl script cant interfere with another. Command line options can also be used to deal with programs that have memory leaks or other problems that might keep them from otherwise running persistently.

SpeedyCGI can be used to speed up perl CGI scripts. It conforms to the CGI specification, and does not run perl code inside the web server. Since the perl interpreter runs outside the web server, it cant cause problems for the web server itself.

SpeedyCGI also provides an Apache module so that under the Apache web server, scripts can be run without the overhead of doing a fork/exec for each request. With this module a small amount of frontend code is run within the web server - the perl interpreters still run outside the server.

SpeedyCGI and PersistentPerl are currently both names for the same code. SpeedyCGI was the original name, but because people werent sure what it did, the name PersistentPerl was picked as an alias. At some point SpeedyCGI will be replaced by PersistentPerl, or become a sub-class of PersistentPerl to avoid always having two distributions.