From: Alex Fenton <alex@...>
Date: 2006-11-08T14:05:05+09:00
Subject: Re: Why create web servers?

Hi

CatLady [] wrote:

> I know theres a WEBrick object and a few others out there that allow you 
> to create web servers with ease, but why would anyone want to do that 
> when theres stable and fully featured servers already out there?

A few possibilities:

1) Because WEBrick comes with the standard library, it means other libraries can rely on it being there. For example, it's used very effectively by rubygems to create a local documentation server. 

2) There's situations where configurability and integration with Ruby is more important than performance or features. Rail's use of WEBrick as a local testing server is an example of this (as well as of 1)).

3) Performance or footprint might matter more than features. So you get specialised servers like mongrel, squid or lighthttpd.

4) You might be interested in writing a custom protocol server. WEBrick is handy reference code for how to write a server for a well-documented, well-understood protocol.

5) It might be fun to write a webserver.

> Sorry for posting this here, I dont really see this as a rails question.

Don't be sorry, it's a good question and welcome here. 

Alex