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README.md

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+# qswiki
+
+About
+====
+qswiki is a wiki software, intended for small wikis. Originally 
+implemented in C, it's now written in C++.
+
+History
+====
+A couple of years ago, I wanted to setup a personal wiki on my raspberry 
+pi. However, the distribution I used back then did not have a PHP package 
+for ARM. So I decided I would write one in C. Yes, that's an odd way 
+to approach the problem and indeed, I may have had too much time back 
+then. Also, I wanted to see how it's like to write a "web app" in C 
+and wanted to sharpen my C a little bit.
+
+Of course, it's pretty straightforward at first. No really. Just use CGI. 
+And indeed, that's probably more than enough. Then I decided to play 
+around and started using FastCGI (with the official library from now 
+defunct fastcgi.com) and created a multi-threaded version. It initially 
+used a "pile of files database", but that became too painful, so then 
+I started using sqlite.
+
+C++
+---
+Eventually the code became unmaintainable. Initially, I wanted something 
+quick. I did not care about memory leaks (as it was CGI initially). 
+After FastCGI, they became an issue. In the end, the task of avoiding
+memory leaks became too annoying. And of course, C does not include any 
+"batteries" and while I could manage, this too was another good reason.
+
+Overall, I am just continuing the experiment with C++17 now. It's not 
+nearly as bad as you would expect perhaps. Some things are surprisingly 
+convenient even. Still, the standard library is lacking and 
+I would hope for a some better built-in Unicode support in the future.
+
+Features
+========
+To be fair, at this point it doesn't even have a "diff" between revisions 
+yet and does not have features that make you prefer it over other wikis.
+
+ - CGI
+ - HTTP server using the header only library cpp-httplib. It's more 
+ portable and more "future-proof" than FastCGI (since the official website 
+ disappeared, the library's future appears to be uncertain).
+ - Support for user accounts. Passwords are stored using PBKDF2.
+  sqlite database, but not too much of an effort to add other types of 
+  storage backends. sqlite is using the great header only library 
+  sqlite_modern_cpp
+ - Relatively fine-grained permission system.
+ - Categories
+ - Templates
+ - FTS search
+ - Caching
+
+Security
+========
+The most reasonable way would have been to add some sort sandboxing 
+support right away, but this is lacking so far. As for "web security", 
+all POST requests are centrally protected against CSRF attacks and all 
+input is escaped against XSS attacks.
+
+Building
+========
+Dependencies:
+  - cpp-httplib: https://github.com/yhirose/cpp-httplib
+  - SqliteModernCpp: https://github.com/SqliteModernCpp
+ 
+Given the fact those are header-only libraries, they are already
+included here, so you only need to run: 
+
+```make release```
+
+
+Setup
+=====
+To be written