From: Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@...>
Date: 2007-03-03T22:10:42+09:00
Subject: [ANN] Rack 0.1, a modular Ruby webserver interface


Hello,

Today I'm proud to release Rack 0.1.

= Rack, a modular Ruby webserver interface

Rack provides a minimal, modular and adaptable interface for developing
web applications in Ruby.  By wrapping HTTP requests and responses in
the simplest way possible, it unifies and distills the API for web
servers, web frameworks, and software in between (the so-called
middleware) into a single method call.

The exact details of this are described in the Rack specification,
which all Rack applications should conform to.

== Supported web servers

The included *handlers* connect all kinds of web servers to Rack:
* Mongrel
* WEBrick
* FCGI
* CGI

Any valid Rack app will run the same on all these handlers, without
changing anything.

== Supported web frameworks

The included *adapters* connect Rack with existing Ruby web frameworks:
* Camping
* Rails (alpha)
* more to come soon, ...

These frameworks include Rack adapters in their distributions:
* Ramaze
* Maveric
* Racktools::SimpleApplication

== Available middleware

Between the server and the framework, Rack can be customized to your
applications needs using middleware, for example:
* Rack::URLMap, to route to multiple applications inside the same process.
* Rack::CommonLogger, for creating Apache-style logfiles.
* Rack::ShowException, for catching unhandled exceptions and
  presenting them in a nice and helpful way with clickable backtrace.
* Rack::File, for serving static files.
* ...

All these components use the same interface, which is described in
detail in the Rack specification.  You can choose to use them exactly
in the way you want.

== Convenience

If you want to develop outside of existing frameworks, implement your
own ones, or develop middleware, Rack provides many helpers to create
Rack applications quickly and without doing the same web stuff all
over:
* Rack::Request, which also provides query string parsing and
  multipart handling.
* Rack::Response, for convenient generation of HTTP replies and
  cookie handling.
* Rack::MockRequest and Rack::MockResponse for efficient and quick
  testing of Rack application without real HTTP round-trips.

== rackup

rackup is a useful tool for running Rack applications, which uses the
Rack::Builder DSL to configure middleware and build up applications
easily.

rackup automatically figures out the environment it is run in, and
runs your application as FastCGI, CGI, or standalone with Mongrel or
WEBrick---all from the same configuration.

== Where can I get it?

You can download Rack 0.1 at

        http://chneukirchen.org/releases/rack-0.1.0.tar.gz
                  http://rubyforge.org/projects/rack

Alternatively, you can checkout from the development repository with:

           darcs get http://chneukirchen.org/repos/rack

(Patches using "darcs send" are most welcome.)

== Installing with RubyGems

A Gem of Rack is available.  You can install it with:

    gem install rack

I also provide a local mirror of the gems (and development snapshots)
at my site:

    gem install rack --source http://chneukirchen.org/releases/gems

== History

* March 3rd, 2007: First public release 0.1.

== Contact

Please mail bugs, suggestions and patches to
<mailto:chneukirchen@gmail.com>.

Darcs repository ("darcs send" is welcome for patches):
http://chneukirchen.org/repos/rack

You are also welcome to join the #rack channel on irc.freenode.net.

== Thanks to

* Michael Fellinger, for helpful discussion.
* Christoffer Sawicki, for the Rails adapter.
* Armin Ronacher, for the logo and racktools.
* Marcus R�ckert, for help with configuring and debugging lighttpd.
* The WSGI team for the well-done and documented work they've done and
  Rack builds up on.

== Copyright

Copyright (C) 2007  Christian Neukirchen <http://purl.org/net/chneukirchen>

Rack is freely distributable under the terms of an MIT-style license.

== Links

Rack:: <http://rack.rubyforge.org/>
Rack's Rubyforge project:: <http://rubyforge.org/projects/rack>

Camping:: <http://camping.rubyforge.org/>
Ramaze:: <http://ramaze.rubyforge.org/>
Maveric:: <http://maveric.rubyforge.org/>
racktools:: <http://lucumr.pocoo.org/trac/repos/racktools/>

Christian Neukirchen:: <http://chneukirchen.org/>

Happy hacking and have a nice day,
Christian Neukirchen

79b46158b7b30adcd7a9148cc7ed4305  rack-0.1.0.tar.gz
61a51b2f609833f4e0c11213a0070721  rack-0.1.0.gem
-- 
Christian Neukirchen  <chneukirchen@gmail.com>  http://chneukirchen.org