> James Newton, Host wrote:
> > Is the "home" directory and the "project" directory something that 
> > could be used to provide multi user access to this 
> environment from a 
> > web server?
> 
> I'm not quite following what you are suggesting and what 
> problem you are trying to solve.  I guess you don't want 
> people to need to install the whole environment just to build 
> a project?  

Exactly.

> That means the build has to be run on your 
> machine where all but the specific project files live, with 
> standard include files, linker scripts, etc on your machine?  

Yep.

> How would your machine know how to get the project-specific 
> source files from the user's machine?

They would have to be uploaded by the user. If there are going to be a lot
of them in the average project, then the idea is not worth doing. If they
are going to be standardized, even if that is a large set, then it could
still be useful, but would require a lot more work to set up.

> I don't know that much about high end web and server 
> mechanics, so I'm really asking.

It's pretty much still all just input and output. The only real difference
is that each contact from a user to the server must be complete (it costs a
lot to track things from one contact or "hit" to the next) and you must be
able to service the request quickly and close the connection. One web server
is taking requests from hundreds or thousands of different users and so it
can not spend any time on each request. 

For things that take time, it is best to hit the server once to start the
process, assign a job ID, and then again when the process is done
referencing the ID to know which job this user was waiting for. Since the
connections must originate at the browser and the browser has no way of
knowing how long the process will take, in most cases you set the browser up
with HTML or javascript that causes it to "check back" every few seconds and
the server just looks and says "not yet" or "yes, here is the result".

Ah, well, I'm rambling on... That is more than you wanted to know, I'm sure.

Anyway, just a thought. Multiple files specific to each project kills it.

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