The Viriatum Web Server is simple and lightweight web server aimed at providing a simple yet powerful solution for static file serving, reverse proxy serving and dynamic language handling.

The current implementation support both x86/x64 and ARM architectures.

Building

Automium

Building viriatum using automium is quite simple even for complex builds like cross compilation. Just use the appropriate 'build.json' located under 'scripts/build' and under such directory execute:

atm

For production purposes one should use the proper optimization flags:

atm --cflags=-O3

For cross compilation (eg: arm-rasp-linux) use the following command:

atm --cflags=-O3 --cross=arm-rasp-linux-gnueabi

If you want to know more about cross compilation please refer to the Cross Compilation document.

CMake

CMake is the recommended build system for local development and IDE integration.

cmake -B build
cmake --build build

The binary is placed under build/bin/viriatum.

For a debug build (enables debug logging with file/line info and V_DEBUG output):

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -B build
cmake --build build

Debug logging can also be enabled independently of the optimization level:

cmake -D VIRIATUM_DEBUG=ON -B build
cmake --build build

For a release build with debug symbols (-O2 -g):

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -B build
cmake --build build

To set a custom www root path (equivalent to --with-wwwroot in Autoconf):

cmake -D VIRIATUM_WWW_ROOT=/var/viriatum/www -B build
cmake --build build

If the project has Conan-managed dependencies, install them first:

conan install . --output-folder=build --build=missing -s build_type=Debug
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug --toolchain build/conan_toolchain.cmake
cmake --build build

Autoconf / Automake

If you're going to build viriatum using the git repository you first need to generate the configure files using autoconf.

./autogen.sh

Unix

For building under unix simple instructions are used:

./configure
make && make install

In order to provide a correct (system wide) configuration path use:

./configure --sysconfdir=/etc

In order to get the most performance out of viriatum set the CFLAGS variable for optimization:

CFLAGS="-O3" ./configure

Unix 32bit from 64bit

apt-get libc6-dev-i386
export CC="cc -m32"
./configure
make && make install

Android

Building viriatum for android involves cross compilation and the android ndk toolkit must be used.

Check the instructions for downloading the android ndk from the official website, then unpack the android-ndk package file into the current directory.

The recommended NDK version is r8e as compatibility is ensured for that version. NDK is currently known to have problems compiling some of the packages (including PHP, Python and Lua). To download that version of the NDK for Linux use this link.

Because of problems building the static versions of PHP, Python, Lua, etc. some of the modules are currently not compatible with Android.

The r8d or preivous versions of the NDK are meant to be run only under x86 machines and should be used with care unnder x86-64 based machines.

tar -xvf android-ndk-r[x]-linux-[arch].tar.bz2

Create the standalone toolchain using the script for that purpose.

android-ndk-r[x]/build/tools/make-standalone-toolchain.sh --system=linux-x86_64\
    --platform=android-4 --install-dir=/opt/android-toolchain

And then you may use the "just" created toolchain to build Viriatum with:

export PATH=/opt/android-toolchain/bin:$PATH
export CFLAGS="-L/opt/android-toolchain/lib -I/opt/android-toolchain/include\
    -L/opt/android-root/lib -I/opt/android-root/include"
./configure --host=arm-linux-androideabi --build=arm --prefix=/opt/android-root
make && make install

Windows

For building using the default mingw32 toolchain.

apt-get install mingw32 mingw32-binutils
./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --build=i686-linux --prefix=/opt/i586-mingw32
make && make install

For building using the mingw-w64 toolchain for 64 and 32 bit options.

apt-get install mingw-w64 gcc-mingw-w64 binutils-mingw-w64
./configure --host=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --build=i686-linux --prefix=/opt/x86_64-w64-mingw32
./configure --host=i686-w64-mingw32 --build=i686-linux --prefix=/opt/i686-w64-mingw32
make && make install

Notes

• In order to compile to WINVER <= 0x0500 (Windows 2000 or older) disable IPv6 support (#undef VIRIATUM_IP6)

FreeBSD

FreeBSD ignores the /usr/local directory by default so it must be included in order to conform with dependencies.

setenv CFLAGS "-L/usr/local/lib -I/usr/local/include"

Features

There are a lot of possible building features to enable

• --with-moduleroot=path - Sets the path to be used to load the modules
• --with-wwwroot=path - Sets the path to be used to install and serve the default content
• --enable-debug - Enables the extra debugging capabilities in Viriatum
• --enable-defaults - Enables the default paths in the viriatum server, ignoring wwwroot and moduleroot at runtime
• --disable-ipv6 - Disables the support for the IPv6 protocol stack
• --disable-epoll - Disables the support for the epoll mechanism
• --enable-mpool- Enables the memory pool support (optimized for windows only)
• --enable-prefork - Enables the prefork support so that viriatum can create workers

Python Package

Viriatum may be imported from the Python interpreter and used to serve either a WSGI or an ASGI application on its own event loop, no separate server process is required:

pip install .

A WSGI application is served by passing it to the server, the interface is detected from the shape of the application:

import viriatum


def application(environ, start_response):
    start_response("200 OK", [("Content-Type", "text/plain")])
    return [b"Hello World"]


viriatum.serve(application, port=8080)

An ASGI application is served in exactly the same way, a coroutine function is recognised as such and driven on the asyncio loop that the server advances once per iteration of its own:

import viriatum


async def application(scope, receive, send):
    await receive()
    await send(
        {
            "type": "http.response.start",
            "status": 200,
            "headers": [(b"content-type", b"text/plain")],
        }
    )
    await send({"type": "http.response.body", "body": b"Hello World"})


viriatum.serve(application, port=8080)

The http, lifespan and websocket scopes are all supported, response bodies are streamed as each chunk is sent.

Both versions of the ASGI interface are supported. The single callable shape above is the third version, while the second one hands the scope to an outer callable and the pair of callables to the awaitable it returns:

import viriatum


def application(scope):
    async def handle(receive, send):
        await receive()
        await send({"type": "http.response.start", "status": 200, "headers": []})
        await send({"type": "http.response.body", "body": b"Hello World"})

    return handle


viriatum.serve(application, port=8080, interface="asgi")

The version is detected from the shape of the application, honouring the _asgi_single_callable and _asgi_double_callable markers when present. The interface may also be forced with interface set to wsgi, asgi2 or asgi3. Note that auto only tells a single callable ASGI application apart from a WSGI one, as a double callable application is indistinguishable from a WSGI callable, so a second version application needs asgi, asgi2 or one of the markers.

Modules

There are a series of modules for the viriatum server that are used to extend functionality of the base server, in order to compile then some rules apply. Current modules include:

• mod_lua - For interaction with the Lua interpreter
• mod_php - For interaction with the PHP interpreter (complex compilation)
• mod_wsgi - For interaction with the Python interpreter using the WSGI specification.

Lua Module

For an Ubuntu/Debian environment the Lua 5.1 development packages must be included using:

apt-get install liblua5.1-0-dev

On Alpine Linux:

apk add lua5.1-dev

PHP Module

Requires PHP 8.x compiled with the embed SAPI. On Alpine Linux the simplest approach is to use the system packages:

apk add php84-dev php84-embed

When building PHP from source, compile with embed SAPI support (the library is now named libphp.so instead of the old libphp5.so):

./configure --enable-embed

For static linking, useful for package distribution:

export CFLAGS="-fpic"
./configure --enable-embed=static --disable-libxml --disable-dom --disable-simplexml\
    --disable-xml --disable-xmlreader --disable-xmlwriter --without-pear --without-iconv

The PHP module must then be compiled with CFLAGS pointing to the PHP include directories. The easiest way is to use php-config:

export CFLAGS="$(php-config --includes)"

Or manually:

export CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include/php -I/usr/local/include/php/main\
    -I/usr/local/include/php/TSRM -I/usr/local/include/php/Zend"

Additional information about PHP compilation flags may be found here.

WSGI Module

Requires Python 3 development headers and shared library. On Ubuntu/Debian:

apt-get install python3-dev

On Alpine Linux:

apk add python3-dev

On macOS (Homebrew):

brew install python3

The module is compiled with flags from python3-config:

export CFLAGS="$(python3-config --includes)"
export LDFLAGS="$(python3-config --ldflags --embed)"

Docker

It's possible to run viriatum inside a Docker container. Three Dockerfiles are provided:

• Dockerfile - Core server only (~11 MB)
• Dockerfile.php - Core + mod_php with PHP 8.4 (~22 MB)
• Dockerfile.all - All modules: diag, gif, lua, php, wsgi (~112 MB)

To build and run:

docker build -t viriatum .
docker run -p 9090:9090 viriatum

To build the full image with all modules:

docker build -f Dockerfile.all -t viriatum-all .
docker run -p 9090:9090 viriatum-all

Benchmarking

• Most of the information presented in gwan benchmark is applicable for benchmarking Viriatum

For more information regarding benchmarking please check the list of todo information.

Debugging

• For windows debugging use Visual Leak Detector using the #include <vld.h> statement
• In linux/unix environments use Valgrind with valgrind --tool=memcheck --leak-check=full viriatum

Profiling

• On windows systems the tool to uses is the Very Sleepy
• For linux/unix machines the best approach is to go with either Sysprof or the more expensive Zoom from rotate right

Versioning

The current version numbering in viriatum follows the following wildcard based structure ${MAJ}.${MIN}.${MIC}${STA}${STA_VER} and in order to change any of these values the definitions.h and the build.json files must be changed.

In case any one of the version numbers or the stage value changes a new tag must be created in the git repository, so that the version is correctly identified for the repository contributors.

License

Viriatum is currently licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

Build Automation