Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C

2.1. Preliminaries

Before you can start hacking away at your own Apache modules, there are a number of preliminaries to take care of. This section discusses what you need and how you can get it if you don't have it already.

2.1.1. A Working Apache Web Server

You'll need a working version of Apache, preferably a recent release (the version we used to prepare this book was Version 1.3.4). If you do not already have Apache, you can download it, free of charge, from http://www.apache.org/.

Users of Windows 95 and NT systems (henceforth called "Win32") who want to write modules using the Perl API can download precompiled binaries. You will need two components: the server itself, available at http://www.apache.org/dist/, and ApacheModulePerl.dll , which is mod_perl implemented as a dynamically loadable module. ApacheModulePerl.dll has been made available by Jeffrey W. Baker. You can find it on the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) in the directory authors/Jeffrey_Baker/.^[1] Win32 users with access to the Microsoft Visual C++ development environment can also compile ApacheModulePerl.dll from mod_perl source code.

^[1] See the preface for instructions on finding and using a CPAN site close to you.

This book will not try to teach you how to install and maintain an Apache-based web site. For the full details, see the Apache server's excellent online documentation or the reference books listed in the preface.

2.1.2. A C Compiler and make Utility

To use the C API, you'll need a ...