Zbatery: Rack HTTP server without a fork stuck in it

Zbatery is an HTTP server for Rack applications on systems that either do not support fork(), or have no memory (nor need) to run the master/worker model. It is based on Rainbows! (which is based on Unicorn (which is based on Mongrel)) and inherits parts of each. Zbatery supports your choice of all the thread/fiber/event/actor-based concurrency models and Rack middleware that Rainbows! supports (or will ever support) in a single process.

Zbatery will still exploit certain features of Unix for transparent upgrades, log reopening, and graceful stops, but does not rely on them for basic functionality.

Features

Designed for Rack, the standard for modern Ruby HTTP applications.
Configuration files are compatible with Rainbows!, a superset of the Unicorn DSL.
Inherits all features and concurrency models Rainbows! supports (and ever will support): rainbows.rubyforge.org/Summary.html
-Untested- Works under operating systems that don’t support signals, pipe and fork(). Unicorn 0.95.2+ has rake-compiler support, so compiling the HTTP parser should be easier at least.
Web Sockets support (via Sunshowers), requires Rainbows! 0.9.0+

License

Zbatery is 100% Free Software.

Install

You may download the tarball from the Rainbows project page on Rubyforge and run setup.rb after unpacking it (and installing Unicorn and Rainbows!):

rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=8977

You may also install it via RubyGems on Gemcutter:

  gem install zbatery

Zbatery depends on Rainbows!, and in turn, Unicorn. Despite Unicorn and Rainbows! being Unix-only, the Unicorn HTTP parser C extension should build on non-Unix-like systems (unverified).

Usage

for Rack applications

In APP_ROOT (where config.ru is located), run:

  zbatery

Zbatery will bind to all interfaces on TCP port 8080 by default.

Configuration File(s)

Zbatery will look for the config.ru file used by rackup in APP_ROOT.

For deployments, it can use a config file for Unicorn and Rainbows!-specific options specified by the --config-file/-c command-line switch. Zbatery accepts all options found in Unicorn::Configurator as well as the “Rainbows!” block, so you can have the following in your config file:

    Rainbows! do
      use :FiberSpawn
      worker_connections 400
    end

See the Rainbows! configuration documentation for more details.

Disclaimer

There is NO WARRANTY whatsoever if anything goes wrong, but let us know and we’ll try our best to fix it.

This project may be temporary and may eventually have its name encoded with uncrackable ROT13 encryption leaving you with no way to upgrade.

Development

Most of the work is done in Rainbows!, Zbatery is just a shim to allow access to Rainbows! without requiring fork() or signals.

You can get the latest source via git from the following locations:

  git://git.bogomips.org/zbatery.git
  git://repo.or.cz/zbatery.git (mirror)

You may browse the code from the web and download the latest snapshot tarballs here:

git.bogomips.org/cgit/zbatery.git (cgit)
repo.or.cz/w/zbatery.git (gitweb)

Inline patches (from “git format-patch”) to the mailing list are preferred because they allow code review and comments in the reply to the patch.

We will adhere to mostly the same conventions for patch submissions as git itself. See the Documentation/SubmittingPatches document distributed with git on on patch submission guidelines to follow. Just don’t email the git mailing list or maintainer with Zbatery patches.

Tests

There currently are no tests specific to Zbatery. Keep in mind that Zbatery is only a small shim to drive Rainbows! (and Unicorn) underneath. Rainbows! and Unicorn both have extensive (but very UNIX-specific) test suites.

Contact

All feedback (bug reports, user/development discussion, patches, pull requests) go to the mailing list/newsgroup. We are currently borrowing the Rainbows! mailing list since most of our code (and problems) are related to Rainbows! rainbows-talk@rubyforge.org.

Home Classes Methods

Files

Class Index