== Mongrel:  Simple Fast Mostly Ruby Web Server

Mongrel is a small library that provides a very fast HTTP 1.1 server for Ruby
web applications.  It is not particular to any framework, and is intended to
be just enough to get a web application running behind a more complete and robust
web server.

What makes Mongrel so fast is the careful use of a C extension to provide fast
HTTP 1.1 protocol parsing and fast URI lookup.  This combination makes the server
very fast without too many portability issues.

== Status

Mongrel is still very ALPHA work, but you can see how it's used with the
Camping framework (version 1.2) and take a look at how you might use it.
Right now it handles HTTP requests well and process the responses fast, but
you have to "roll your own" response code.

The next release of Mongrel will have improved IO handling, much more stability,
and should have a better Mongrel::HttpResponse object with more useful features.

== Install

You can install it via source from http://www.zedshaw.com/downloads/mongrel/
or you can gram a RubyGem at http://www.zedshaw.com/downloads/mongrel/
and install that manually.  I'm working on setting up a RubyForge project.

It doesn't explicitly require Camping, but if you want to run the examples/tepee.rb 
example then you'll need to install Camping 1.2 at least (and redcloth I think).  
These are all available from RubyGems.

The library consists of a C extension so you'll need a C compiler or at least a friend
who can build it for you.


Finally, the source include a setup.rb for those who hate RubyGems.

== Usage

Best place to look for usage examples right now is the examples/ directory.

== Speed

This 0.1.2 release will not be as fast as the 0.1.1 release since I've temporarily
removed threads as a test.  There were many stability issues related to handling
each request in a thread, especially on OSX.  I've taken them out for now to 
make things stable.  Even with this removed Mongrel is still pretty fast compared
to WEBrick.

== Contact

E-mail zedshaw at zedshaw.com and I'll help.  Comments about the API are welcome.