The usability win is available *if* pcgi is no longer required to control activation of the LRP. If we limit the short-term solution to the following conditions, we can probably have some working code in short order:
1) LRP is started manually
I think this is a fair assumption. We've talked, and we can offer that at least a preliminary ultra-alpha version of ZDaemon could be made available as soon as an alpha mod_pcgi is available. This would just be for testing and working out some problems, not for production use obviously.
2) mod_pcgi is only responsible for communicating to a single (Zope) LRP.
Um, why not have a small configuration variable that can be put in httpd.conf that controls what it talks to? At least port wise.
Otherwise, difficulties in getting pcgi to work with Apache may actually become *more* frustrating to debug. At least until we have ZDaemon and pcgi <-> LRP negotiation in place.
:-) Chris