Rails - Apr 2006 - Mongrel Web Server 0.3.12.4 -- Relaxed Parser, Date Fix

Hello Everyone,

Just a small announcement for Mongrel 0.3.12.4 which fixes the following
things:

* Corrects the date format returned so that months are three chars only.
* Fixes a problem where DirHandler wasn''t returning Last-Modified and
Etag
headers for unknown MIME types.
* Implements a default mime type for anything it doesn''t know about,
and
lets you set it via an attribute in DirHandler if you want different.
* Cleans up the file serving code in DirHandler a bit.
* Relaxes the parser to that it will accept any request methods as long as
they are upper case, digits, safe chars ($ - _ .) and with length from 1-20
characters.  Anything outside this restriction is still rejected with a
close.

It has been tested under the usual platforms (Linux, FreeBSD, OSX, Win32) so
people on other platforms should report to me any experiences.

You can get information on Mongrel at http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/ and you
can download it from the gem repositories as soon as it hits the mirrors.


REPORTING BUGS

A couple people complained that they hate joining mailing lists to report
bugs.  I hate that too.  That''s why there''s two yellow bugs on
the main page
which go to:

  http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?atid=5145&group_id=1306&func=browse

Where you can report bugs and I''ll fix them.  If you take a look
I''ve
already done 11 bugs.


WIN32 0.3.12.5

The 0.3.12.5 release will be for cleaning up the differences between POSIX
and Win32 systems.  The plan is to get rid of mongrel_rails_service and the
mongrel_rails_svc command and start using one consistent mongrel_rails
command for all platforms.


CANDA ON RAILS

Finally I''ll be at Canada on Rails and I''m looking to meet
with people who
have problems running Mongrel or who have production applications and are
interested in getting Mongrel to run them.  E-mail me off-list if
you''re
interested in meeting up with me.


THE BIG PRODUCTION RELEASE

About a week after Canada on Rails I''ll have everyone''s
feedback
incorporated and will do the release that I consider production ready. 
I''m
going to version this release as:

  Mongrel 0.4 Enterprise Edition 1.2

This is to keep up with the Java trend of tacking the word
"Enterprise" onto
anything they want to sell and giving it two version numbers: one for
developers and one for managers.

If you''re looking for a set of elevator pitches for Mongrel, then I
would
suggest these after this release:

  * "Mongrel powers the Web 2.0 revolution just like Rails."
  * "Mongrel''s enterprise ready, look, says so right in the
name."
  * "Mongrel''s version 1.2, Rails is only 1.1.58."
  * "Sure Mongrel can scale, all you do is strap a salmon to the jello and
it scales just fine."
      -- Makes about as much sense as Java''s scalability arguments so
why
not.

Enjoy!

Zed A. Shaw
http://www.zedshaw.com/
http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/