Ferron - a fast, memory-safe web server written in Rust

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Features

• High performance - built with Rust’s async capabilities for optimal speed.
• Memory-safe - built with Rust, which is a programming language offering memory safety.
• Extensibility - modular architecture for easy customization.
• Secure - focus on robust security practices and safe concurrency.

Components

Ferron consists of multiple components:

• ferron - the main web server.
• ferron-passwd - a tool for generating hashed passwords, which can be copied into the web server's configuration file.
• ferron-precompress - a tool for precompressing static files for Ferron.
• ferron-yaml2kdl - a tool for attempting to convert the Ferron 1.x YAML configuration to Ferron 2.x KDL configuration.

Ferron also consists of:

• build-prepare - internal tool for preparation when building Ferron with modules.
• ferron-common - code common for Ferron and its modules.
• ferron-dns-builtin - built-in Ferron DNS providers.
• ferron-load-modules - functions for loading Ferron modules.
• ferron-modules-builtin - built-in Ferron modules.
• ferron-yaml2kdl-core - the core library behind the ferron-yaml2kdl tool.

Building Ferron from source

You can clone the repository and explore the existing code:

git clone https://github.com/ferronweb/ferron.git
cd ferron

You can then build and run the web server using Cargo:

cargo run --manifest-path build-prepare/Cargo.toml
cd build-workspace
cargo update # If you experience crate conflicts
cargo build -r --target-dir ../target
cd ..
cp ferron-test.kdl ferron.kdl
target/release/ferron

You can also, for convenience, use make:

make build # Build the web server
make build-dev # Build the web server, for development and debugging
make run # Run the web server
make run-dev # Run the web server, for development and debugging
make smoketest # Perform a smoke test
make smoketest-dev # Perform a smoke test, for development and debugging
make package # Package the web server to a ZIP archive (run it after building it)
make package-deb # Package the web server to a Debian package (run it after building it)
make package-rpm # Package the web server to an RPM package (run it after building it)

Or a build.ps1 build script, if you're on Windows:

REM Build the web server
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass .\build.ps1 Build

REM Build the web server, for development and debugging
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass .\build.ps1 BuildDev

REM Run the web server
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass .\build.ps1 Run

REM Run the web server, for development and debugging
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass .\build.ps1 RunDev

REM Perform a smoke test
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass .\build.ps1 Smoketest

REM Perform a smoke test, for development and debugging
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass .\build.ps1 SmoketestDev

REM Package the web server to a ZIP archive (run it after building it)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass .\build.ps1 Package

You can also create a ZIP archive that can be used by the Ferron installer:

make build-with-package

Or if you're on Windows:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass .\build.ps1 BuildWithPackage

The ZIP archive will be located in the dist directory.

You can also cross-compile the web server for a different target:

# Replace "i686-unknown-linux-gnu" with the target (as defined by the Rust target triple) you want to build for
make build TARGET="i686-unknown-linux-gnu" CARGO_FINAL="cross"

It's also possible to use only Cargo to build the web server, although you wouldn't be able to use external modules:

cargo build -r
./target/release/ferron

For compilation notes, see the compilation notes page.

Modules

If you would like to develop Ferron modules, you can find the Ferron module development notes.

Server configuration

You can check the Ferron documentation to see configuration properties used by Ferron.

Contributing

See Ferron contribution page for details.

License

Ferron is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.