[Web-SIG] [ANN] Aspen 0.5 -- module reloading & directory handlers

[Chad Whitacre]

René,

> Why did you make it?  Just for fun?  Or is there some other reason you
> chose to make it?

Thanks for biting. :-)

Not just for fun, no. I maintain about 30 websites, implemented 
in a mix of server technologies:

   - Apache (static HTML, CGI, PHP)
   - Zope 2 (with and without Plone)
   - httpyd (Aspen fore-runner)

My goal with Aspen is to shove all of this heterogeneity into the 
websites themselves, and use a single server for all of them. I 
named it Aspen because a grove of aspen trees all share a common 
root structure (ranking certain aspen groves among the world's 
largest living things!).

As I mentioned earlier, I think Aspen shares this goal with Paste 
Script/Deploy, but Aspen is more filesystem-centric, it's 
intended for production use, and (IMO) it's simpler.

Here are some design considerations:

   - I want to use a single web server for many heterogeneous
     websites, from development through to production.

   - A website should "look like a website" on the filesystem. Any
     project-y directory structure should be swept under the rug.

   - At the same time, websites should be self-contained, with all
     packages and configuration together in one place.

   - I should be able to type "aspen" in any directory and have
     something smart happen.

   - Configuration syntaxes should be simple and stupid. Python
     especially is waaay overkill as a configuration language.


If Aspen were written in C you could compare it to Mongrel.

I'd be curious to know what you use to build and deploy your WSGI 
websites. Do you use Paste Script/Deploy, or something else?

Thanks again for your questions.



chad

P.S. Paste includes a lot. I actually spent quite a while today 
becoming more familiar with all of Paste's middleware, and I'm 
pretty excited about that part of it. PonyMiddleware! :)