words by patrick

I’ve started a new project (ha! as if I needed another): I’m trying to write an HTTP server in ruby using just the HTTP/1.1 RFC (RFC 2616) and the ruby docs. It’s called Perchance, just because I’m feeling rather serendipitous. It’s been mildly successful so far. I’ve gotten it to connect to respond to a basic GET request, which means that the socket stuff is working good. Now I just have to worry about the proper formatting of the protocol. It’s really just a matter of coming up with cleaver ways to read and respond to the requests, because right now it’s pretty crude.

I’m doing this because I think it’ll be useful to be able to create an application from only an RFC. These things are pretty dry, and to be able to read through them and extract the requirements and create a program that adheres to them is probably a pretty useful skill, especially since all the documentation on cool stuff like SIP and NAT-Transversal tend to be hidden away inside RFCs.

Also, learning the ruby socket stuff is fun. It feels useful already.

I don’t know if it’s something I’ll ever release (something tells me the world could go without another httpd) but it’s definitely an interesting project for the time being. I’ll update the status on it around the new year. Hopefully I’ll have most of the spec done by then.

fortune spat out something funny and relevant today:

“Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.”
— Dick Brandon

UPDATE 3/08/07: Bart has updated SSH Keychain to 0.8 and made it a UB. Thanks Bart!

The development of SSHKeychain, my favourite little SSH key manager seems to have stalled for some reason or another. Unfortunately, their last release is a PPC build, meaning it has to run under Rosetta on all the fancy new Intel machines Apple is shipping these days. This is a pain, since it’s actually the last app wasn’t running natively one my Macbook Pro.

I’ve noticed that they actually updated the source in svn to build as a universal binary (way back in February), but never bothered rebuilding and distributing it. Luckily, since open source is really great, I checked out a fresh copy and built such a universal binary for myself. I thought I’d share the results, to make it easy for those who don’t want to install Xcode tools and build it themselves:

Download SSHKeychain r95 - Universal Binary Don’t use this! See Update!

You should really checkout and build yourself if you want to make sure it’s secure and everything, but if you trust me, this is much easier.

Thanks a ton to the SSHKeychain guys for doing their thing. I highly appreciate this piece of software.