[users] Simple Gemini server for testing in the current directory?

One thing that I like about HTTP is that there are oodles of ways to spin 
up a simple server for testing on localhost. Things like `python3 -m 
http.server` and `caddy run` are what I'm thinking of. Since this is 
Gemini and not bare-bones HTTP, It'd have to handle key generation.

Is there a server like that yet for Gemini that runs on macOS?

On Wed, Jan 20, 2021, at 6:56 AM, mailinglists at ngalt.com wrote:
> One thing that I like about HTTP is that there are oodles of ways to 
> spin up a simple server for testing on localhost. Things like `python3 
> -m http.server` and `caddy run` are what I'm thinking of. Since this is 
> Gemini and not bare-bones HTTP, It'd have to handle key generation.
> 
> Is there a server like that yet for Gemini that runs on macOS? 
>

perhaps gemini-php

mailinglists at ngalt.com writes:

> One thing that I like about HTTP is that there are oodles of ways to 
spin up a simple server for testing on localhost. Things like `python3 -m 
http.server` and `caddy run` are what I'm thinking of. Since this is 
Gemini and not bare-bones HTTP, It'd have to handle key generation.
>
> Is there a server like that yet for Gemini that runs on macOS? 

I'm writing a server that almost fit in that description, I was thinking
to share it with the list when I'll finish the vhost and configuration
stuff I was working on, but anyway.

It's called gmid[0][1].  It doesn't (yet) handle the creation of keys,
but you can easily generate a cert and store, say, in you home and
you're done.  Once you've built it, you can serve any directory with
`gmid -c cert.pem -k key.pem -d dir` [2].  Ctrl-c when you're done :)

(I'm also using it to serve my capsule)

It's written in C, sandboxed by default (from the next version) on
OpenBSD, FreeBSD and linux, and with LibreSSL/libretls as only
dependency.  You'll also need lex and yacc/bison to build.  I don't have
a mac, but I don't see why it shouldn't run fine there.

Cheers,

Omar Polo


[0]: https://github.com/omar-polo/gmid
[1]: gemini://gemini.omarpolo.com/pages/gmid.gmi
[2]: this on the last stable (v1.4.1), I've changed -c to -C and -k to
     -K in the master when adding the config (-c)

On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 1:57 AM <mailinglists at ngalt.com> wrote:
>
> One thing that I like about HTTP is that there are oodles of ways to 
spin up a simple server for testing on localhost. Things like `python3 -m 
http.server` and `caddy run` are what I'm thinking of. Since this is 
Gemini and not bare-bones HTTP, It'd have to handle key generation.
>
> Is there a server like that yet for Gemini that runs on macOS?

Hi,

Jetforce was somewhat designed to fill that niche [0]. It has
automatic certificate generation and no config file to mess around
with.

python3 -m pip install jetforce
python3 -m jetforce --dir .

[0] https://github.com/michael-lazar/jetforce

mailinglists at ngalt.com writes:

> One thing that I like about HTTP is that there are oodles of ways to 
spin up a simple server for testing on localhost. Things like `python3 -m 
http.server` and `caddy run` are what I'm thinking of. Since this is 
Gemini and not bare-bones HTTP, It'd have to handle key generation.
>
> Is there a server like that yet for Gemini that runs on macOS? 

If you are a Lispnik, feel free to check out Space Age (The Clojurian's
Gemini Server):

  https://gitlab.com/lambdatronic/space-age

Since Clojure compiles to Java bytecode, it's fully cross-platform. You
just need to install a recent JDK and the Clojure command line tool. Key
generation is handled with a single command, which is documented in the
project's README.

You can then launch Space Age with the following command:

$ clojure -M:run-server .

That will serve up the current directory and anything within it on port
1965. To serve up a different directory, just replace "." with the
directory path.

Uniquely among Gemini servers, Space Age provides a form of server-side
application programming modeled after Clojure's de facto web programming
standard, Ring, but further simplified for Geminispace.

Essentially, dynamic routes can be programmed as simple functions that
take a request map and return a response map. All you have to do is add
a *.clj file anywhere under your document root (or under a user's
/home/username/public_gemini directory), make it executable, and define
a main function within it that will be called whenever that page is
requested by a Gemini client.

So rather than messing with environment variables and printing to
stdout, you can just write pure functions that take and receive data.
Fun times for functional programmers of all ages!

(happy :hacking)
  Gary

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Personally, I test locally with agate, since I can easily run it with 
flags and no config files:

https://github.com/mbrubeck/agate

I used to run it on my server as well, but I switch to gmnisrv for the 
better logging.

As a bonus, you can build both as statically-linked binaries.

IDK how good macOS support is for either of them.

-- 
/Seirdy
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It was thus said that the Great Gary Johnson once stated:
> 
> Uniquely among Gemini servers, Space Age provides a form of server-side
> application programming modeled after Clojure's de facto web programming
> standard, Ring, but further simplified for Geminispace.
> 
> Essentially, dynamic routes can be programmed as simple functions that
> take a request map and return a response map. All you have to do is add
> a *.clj file anywhere under your document root (or under a user's
> /home/username/public_gemini directory), make it executable, and define
> a main function within it that will be called whenever that page is
> requested by a Gemini client.

  I wouldn't say it's unique, just rare.  GLV-1.12556 [1] is also easy to expand
but instead of looking for executable scripts [2], it uses Lua's module
system.  These modules [3] used to return the data as Space-Age, but I
switched to a streaming model to save memory usage [4].

  -spc

[1]	https://github.com/spc476/GLV-1.12556

[2]	With GLV-1.12556, executable scripts are treated as CGI scripts.

[3]	And it's *all* modules---even serving up files from a directory is
	done using this mechanism.

[4]	Some resources served up by my server can be quite large.

Sean Conner <sean at conman.org> writes:
>   I wouldn't say it's unique, just rare.  GLV-1.12556 [1] is also easy to expand
> but instead of looking for executable scripts [2], it uses Lua's module
> system.  These modules [3] used to return the data as Space-Age, but I
> switched to a streaming model to save memory usage [4].
>
>   -spc
>
> [1]	https://github.com/spc476/GLV-1.12556
>
> [2]	With GLV-1.12556, executable scripts are treated as CGI scripts.
>
> [3]	And it's *all* modules---even serving up files from a directory is
> 	done using this mechanism.
>
> [4]	Some resources served up by my server can be quite large.

Thanks for the tip, Sean. I hadn't realized you had also used a
functional programming model for your Lua CGI scripts.

Always something new to learn,
  Gary

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My stargazer[1] has an option for this. If you run `stargazer -d` it'll 
server files out of the current directory and do file listing. It 
auto-generates certs and sticks them in `~/.local/share/stargazer`. Hope 
that helps ?.

[1] gemini://benaaron.dev/stargazer.gmi