# \[ANN\] Mongrel 0.3.9 -- GemPlugin Based **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [March 6, 2006, 7:38am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-mongrel-0-3-9-gemplugin-based/77187 "2006-03-06T07:38:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Zed\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/da6949/32.png) [@Zed\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zed_S)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 7:38am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-mongrel-0-3-9-gemplugin-based/77187/1 "2006-03-06T07:38:44Z")
Hello everyone, Mongrel now has plugins that are based entirely on RubyGems. This feature was so slick that I decided to bust it out into a separate project called GemPlugin (more on that later). What the new plugin system does is makes it so that people can distribute Mongrel plugins as just plain gems, and mongrel will load them on the fly if people install them. There’s no configuration necessary to get this working, and you can already write your own mongrel\_rails commands. == What’s Mongrel Mongrel is a fast HTTP library and server for Ruby that is intended for hosting Ruby web applications of any kind using plain HTTP rather than FastCGI or SCGI. It is framework agnostic and already supports Ruby On Rails, Og+Nitro, and Camping frameworks. == Win32 Warning I’m holding back win32 people for a day while I test this stuff out more completely. It has some slightly specific things that I still need to tweak on win32 to get everything working quite right. Super cool people with build tools can give this a shot and let me know how it goes. Everyone else needs to wait, sorry. == Plugins In Action The plugin system is actually pretty easy for people to use. Let’s say you do your update: $ gem update Which should update mongrel to 0.3.9 and also install a gem\_plugin 0.1. People who haven’t used Mongrel before should do this: $ gem install mongrel Which will again install gem\_plugin as a dependency. To see how the demo works, just run mongrel\_rails and see what commands are available. Now for the cool part. Find a Rails application and run it in daemon mode: $ cd myapp $ mongrel\_rails start -d Ok, now lets install the new mongrel\_status plugin and use it to get the PID: $ sudo gem install mongrel\_status $ mongrel\_rails status If everything worked it should spit out the PID of whatever is running. If you now do mongrel\_rails you’ll see that there’s this new “status” command. Feel free to do this too: $ mongrel\_rails status -h Big deal right? Ok, remove it and watch the status command go away: $ sudo gem uninstall mongrel\_status $ mongrel\_rails See, no more status command. == How It Works I’m still wrestling with the explanation of how GemPlugin works, but go ahead and read: [http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/gem\_plugin\_rdoc/](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/gem_plugin_rdoc/) To get an idea. It’s weird but works fantastic. == Next Steps In the push to 0.4 I’ll be implementing handlers and filters as plugins and setting up the “grand config system” so that you can attach them to URIs. This should be point at which people can literally write their own plugins and extensions to Mongrel without much extra effort. Enjoy! And please post the bugs. Zed A. Shaw > **[Zed A. shaw](https://zedshaw.com/)** > > Personal essays and writings by Zed A. Shaw. ---
**Author:** ![Zed\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/da6949/32.png) [@Zed\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zed_S)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 7:59am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-mongrel-0-3-9-gemplugin-based/77187/2 "2006-03-06T07:59:52Z")
On Mar 5, 2006, at 10:36 PM, Zed S. wrote: > > $ gem update > > ~: sudo gem update mongrel > Password: > Upgrading installed gems… > Updating Gem source index for: [http://gems.rubyforge.org](http://gems.rubyforge.org) > Attempting remote upgrade of mongrel > Attempting remote installation of ‘mongrel’ > Select which gem to install for your platform (powerpc-darwin8.3.0) > > 1. mongrel 0.3.9 (ruby) snip… > 1. Cancel installation > > > 1 > > Install required dependency gem\_plugin? [Yn] Y > > ERROR: While executing gem … (OpenURI::HTTPError) > > 404 Not Found – – Tom M. ---
**Author:** ![Zed\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/da6949/32.png) [@Zed\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zed_S)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 4:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-mongrel-0-3-9-gemplugin-based/77187/3 "2006-03-06T16:59:31Z")
Minor nitpick, but I would love it if someone could figure out why the win32 version of mongrel won’t respond to ctrl-C. Thanks, Carl ---
**Author:** ![Zed\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/da6949/32.png) [@Zed\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zed_S)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2006, 7:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-mongrel-0-3-9-gemplugin-based/77187/4 "2006-03-06T19:56:14Z")
On Mon, Mar 06, 2006 at 07:58:34AM -0800, Carl Y. wrote: > Minor nitpick, but I would love it if someone could figure out why the win32 > version of mongrel won’t respond to ctrl-C. > Thanks, > Carl Use CTRL-Pause Break instead. CTRL-C doesn’t quite work because of the way threading is going. I’ll look at printing out a little message for win32 folks when they start mongrel\_rails up. Zed A. Shaw > **[Zed A. shaw](https://zedshaw.com/)** > > Personal essays and writings by Zed A. Shaw.