Section 1: What This Short Cut Covers
1.1 The Format of This Short Cut
This short cut is an introduction and guide to Mongrel, a fast, versatile Ruby Web server. If you build or manage Web applications, this will be a useful reference as you set up and use Mongrel in your development and production environments, as well as a handbook for how you can extend Mongrel to suit your own needs.
In addition to covering how to use and extend Mongrel, we also review a number of topics that we consider “Best Practices” for modern software development, deployment, and performance testing. We discuss these in the context of using Mongrel, but they should be considered applicable to any software project. Our own work has always benefited from seeing the techniques of others, so we hope that sharing the experience, approach, and philosophy that went into designing and developing Mongrel will be interesting and helpful for your own pursuits.
1.1. The Format of This Short Cut
This short cut uses the common formatting conventions to represent code, filenames, and so on. If you have never read a book on software before, the following description will prove essential.
Indented blocks of code or shell commands will appear in a fixed-width font:
uri '/', :handler => DirHandler.new('/var/www/opinions/')
A reference to a file, function, or class within a sentence—like HttpHandler, mongrel.log, or some_function(param)—will be in italics.
1.2. Zed Sez
We have created a special feature in this book called Zed Sez. Mongrel is certifiably Opinionated Software, and Zed Shaw, the author of Mongrel and coauthor of this short cut, is an Opinionated Developer. Mongrel represents somewhat of a “Best Hits” of the practices and techniques he has refined over time in his work. He wields his no-nonsense, pragmatic approach without fear or hesitation (as anyone on the Mongrel mailing list can attest), so we feel it is only appropriate to make space for some of Zed’s rants to give you a real taste of what Mongrel is all about. You will ee little sidebars throughout the book that come right from the heart (Zed even drew his own head). You may not agree with everything he says, but you probably should.