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What does cgi-bin get you? What does it run on? If I already have a single-file web server, do I need to introduce extra cgi-bin technology also?

• pjc50 4y ago
  Apache supported it, back in the day before nginix existed. It gives you a single-file web page. You can then have multiple pages on the same server run by different users under different userids. It also operates on a model of one execution run per request. So CGIs that aren't currently being served consume no resources.
  • mike_hearn 4y ago
    It still does support it. In fact I use it on our company website to handle the contact form submission. It invokes a Kotlin script which reads the form, handles the recaptcha call and sends an email. Old school but it works and doesn't require any resources except when running.
• jacobr1 4y ago
  For anybody comfortable with the compiling the single-file binary ... it doesn't gain you anything. For a class of "power-end-users" it provides a mechanism to build sandboxed apps on a multi-tenant system. I think the spiritual successors split though between PAAS/heroku-like systems and "low-code" platforms.
  • candiodari 4y ago
    It gains you multi-tenancy on the serving end, making infrastructure very cheap.
• giantrobot 4y ago
  The CGI mechanism let the web server call a separate local binary passing parameters of the request as envars/stdin in a specified manner. The "cgi-bin" was just a server side directory where those CGI binaries lived. If I understand the GP's point, they like the idea of dropping a singular binary in a directory on a server and then it's magically available as an endpoint off the cgi-bin/ path.