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<title>tipidee - a small and fast HTTP/1.1 server</title>
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<p>
<a href="//skarnet.org/software/">Software</a><br />
<a href="//skarnet.org/">skarnet.org</a>
</p>
<h1> tipidee </h1>
<h2> What is it ? </h2>
<p>
tipidee is a web server. It supports HTTP 1.0 and 1.1. It aims to be compliant
with <a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9112">RFC 9112</a>:
while it only implements a very limited subset of the optional functionality
in HTTP 1.1, it implements all the mandatory parts. It is usable with both
HTTP and HTTPS.
</p>
<p>
It runs under a super-server, e.g. inetd,
<a href="//skarnet.org/software/s6-networking/s6-tcpserver.html">s6-tcpserver</a>, or
<a href="//skarnet.org/software/s6-networking/s6-tlsserver.html">s6-tlsserver</a>
(for HTTPS). Traditionally, inetd-mode web servers aren't considered performant,
but tipidee aims to eke out every single drop of performance that is attainable with
its programming model.
</p>
<hr />
<ul>
<li> For the impatient: a <a href="quickstart.html">quickstart guide</a>. </li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2> Why another Web server? </h2>
<p>
There are roughly two groups of web servers.
</p>
<p>
The first one is big, powerful servers such as
<a href="https://nginx.org/">nginx</a>,
<a href="https://httpd.apache.org/">Apache httpd</a>,
and so on. They focus on environments where simplicity isn't a concern
and can be traded off for features, integration with larger ecosystems,
or just serving speed. (<a href="https://www.lighttpd.net/">lighttpd</a>,
for instance, was developed as a proof of concept for solving the
<a href="http://www.kegel.com/c10k.html">c10k problem</a>.)
</p>
<p>
The second one is small, quick-and-dirty servers, aimed at easily deploying
basic HTTP service for serving static files for prototying or in resource
constrained environments such as embedded devices. Among them, for instance,
<a href="https://busybox.net/">busybox httpd</a>,
<a href="http://www.eterna.com.au/bozohttpd/">bozohttpd</a>, or various
httpds from <a href="https://acme.com/software/">ACME Labs</a>.
</p>
<p>
And, surprisingly, not much in between. There are a ton of supposedly
"tiny" or "minimal" servers, written in languages whose naked runtime uses
more resources than <a href="//skarnet.org/software/">the whole skarnet.org
ecosystem</a> by two orders of magnitude; but there isn't one that focused
on what I want from a web server, which is:
</p>
<ul>
<li> Usability with HTTPS without the need to entangle the code with a
given TLS library (which means delegating the TLS layer to a super-server
and not performing the socket work itself. This is important: tying your
Web server to a TLS library makes it more difficult to maintain, more
difficult to secure, more difficult to build, and more difficult to
package and distribute. </li>
<li> Support for HTTP 1.1, with persistent connections, and not only 1.0 </li>
<li> Support for real CGI, not only NPH </li>
</ul>
<p>
All in all, I felt that despite how crowded the web server space is,
there wasn't a satisfactory offer for the needs of skarnet.org and
similar sites that need an <em>intermediary</em> web server.
</p>
<h3> And why "tipidee"? </h3>
<p>
Because <em>h-t-t-p-d</em> is already pretty tedious to say out loud, and
other web servers have a nasty habit of <em>adding</em> to it; it's much
nicer to make it shorter. And yes, you can take that as an indication of what
is going on with the code, too.
</p>
<h2> Installation </h2>
<h3> Requirements </h3>
<ul>
<li> A POSIX-compliant system with a standard C development environment </li>
<li> GNU make, version 3.81 or later </li>
<li> <a href="//skarnet.org/software/skalibs/">skalibs</a> version
2.14.0.0 or later. It's a build-time requirement. It's also a run-time
requirement if you link against the shared version of the skalibs
library. </li>
<li> Recommended at run-time: <a href="//skarnet.org/software/s6-networking/">s6-networking</a> version
2.5.1.4 or later. It's not a strict requirement, but tipidee relies
on a super-server to listen to the network and provide connection
information via environment variables. It also defers to tools such as
<a href="//skarnet.org/software/s6-networking/s6-tcpserver-access.html">s6-tcpserver-access</a>
to provide access control and connection fine-tuning. And if you want
to run an HTTPS server, you'll need something like
<a href="//skarnet.org/software/s6-networking/s6-tlsserver.html">s6-tlsserver</a>
to manage the TLS transport layer. It <em>will</em> make
your life easier.
<ul>
<li> Also, when built with BearSSL,
<a href="//skarnet.org/software/s6-networking/s6-tlsserver.html">s6-tlsserver</a>
basically gives you a TLS tunnel <em>for free</em>. Bearly any RAM use.
Don't take my word for it; try it out for yourself. </li>
</ul> </li>
</ul>
<h3> Licensing </h3>
<p>
tipidee is free software. It is available under the
<a href="https://opensource.org/licenses/ISC">ISC license</a>.
</p>
<h3> Download </h3>
<ul>
<li> The current released version of tipidee is
<a href="tipidee-0.0.1.0.tar.gz">0.0.1.0</a>.
(That is a lie. The link is broken, because tipidee is still
in beta. It will work when it's officially released.) </li>
<li> You can checkout a copy of the
<a href="//git.skarnet.org/cgi-bin/cgit.cgi/tipidee/">tipidee
git repository</a>:
<pre> git clone git://git.skarnet.org/tipidee </pre> </li>
<li> There's also a
<a href="https://github.com/skarnet/tipidee">GitHub mirror</a>
of the tipidee git repository. </li>
</ul>
<h3> Compilation </h3>
<ul>
<li> See the enclosed INSTALL file for installation details. </li>
</ul>
<h3> Upgrade notes </h3>
<ul>
<li> <a href="upgrade.html">This page</a> lists the differences to be aware of between
the previous versions of tipidee and the current one. </li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2> Reference </h2>
<h3> Commands </h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="tipideed.html">The <tt>tipideed</tt> program</a></li>
<li><a href="tipidee-config.html">The <tt>tipidee-config</tt> program</a></li>
</ul>
<h3> Internal commands </h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="tipidee-config-preprocess.html">The <tt>tipidee-config-preprocess</tt> internal program</a></li>
</ul>
<h3> Configuration format </h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="tipidee.conf.html">The <tt>/etc/tipidee.conf</tt> file format</a></li>
</ul>
<h3> Design notes </h3>
<ul>
<li> <a href="future.html">Features that may appear in future versions of tipidee</a> </li>
</ul>
<h2> Related resources </h2>
<ul>
<li> <tt>tipidee</tt> is discussed on the
<a href="//skarnet.org/lists/#skaware">skaware</a> mailing-list. </li>
</ul>
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