Installing

chez-http-server is a set of R6RS libraries. You build its one native piece, chez-libuv's small C shim, once on each machine with make build. Then you put five folders on Chez's library path and import (http-server). Or let Akku do both.

It runs on macOS and Linux, on x86-64 and arm64. Windows is not supported yet: chez-libuv, the libuv binding it runs on, does not support it.

What you need

• Chez Scheme 10.4.1 or newer, threaded. Threaded is Chez's default build. The examples here call the binary chez; yours may be scheme, and then each make command takes CHEZ=scheme.
• libuv 1.48 or newer, where pkg-config can see it: brew install libuv on macOS, apt install libuv1-dev on Ubuntu 24.04 or newer. With no libuv, or an older one (Debian 12 has 1.44), the build compiles a copy pinned in chez-libuv instead, which needs CMake 3.10 or newer.
• A C compiler and make.

To build and try the server without installing these, use a container: scripts/docker-env with Docker, or scripts/guix-env on a Guix host, runs a command in one that has all of it. Put it before make build and make run below, as in scripts/docker-env make build. For Docker, make run also needs -p 8080 before it, so that curl can reach the server. Using the server from your own project still needs the list. See In Docker and On a Guix host.

Build it

git clone --recursive https://github.com/Kiyomi-Computation-Systems/chez-http-server.git
cd chez-http-server
make build

--recursive fetches the dependencies, which are pinned git submodules under vendor/: chez-libuv, chez-httparse (with byte-machine inside it), uriparse, and, for the tests, chez-srfi and vtest2. make build compiles the shim and prints the library path it uses.

Check it works:

make run PROGRAM=examples/hello.sps

Then, in another terminal, curl http://127.0.0.1:8080/ answers Hello. Press Ctrl-C to stop it.

Use it from your own project

Put these five folders of the checkout on CHEZSCHEMELIBDIRS, separated by colons:

For a checkout at ~/src/chez-http-server:

H=~/src/chez-http-server
export CHEZSCHEMELIBDIRS="$H/src:$H/vendor/chez-libuv/src:$H/vendor/chez-httparse/src:$H/vendor/chez-httparse/vendor/byte-machine/src:$H/vendor/uriparse/src"
chez --program my-server.sps

A common setup is to add chez-http-server to your own repository as a git submodule, pinned to a release tag, and set the path in your Makefile.

With Akku

In a project that uses Akku, one command fetches the server and its four dependencies (chez-libuv, chez-httparse, chez-uri and byte-machine), and builds the shim into your project's .akku/ffi. It needs a release of chez-http-server on the Akku index; akku list | grep chez-http-server shows whether there is one.

akku install chez-http-server
. .akku/bin/activate    # puts .akku/lib on Chez's library path
chez --program my-server.sps

It needs what the list above does, but not CMake: libuv must be 1.48 or newer where pkg-config sees it, since an Akku install has no copy of its own to fall back on. Your project's path may hold no spaces, nor any of $ : % ' " \. If the shim does not build, .akku/ffi/chez-libuv-install.log says why. chez-libuv's own page has the rest.

Check the pins

make check-pins checks that every submodule sits at the commit this release was tested with, and that Akku.manifest asks for the same versions. Run it after you pull, or after moving a submodule.

Next

• Quickstart: write a first server.
• Building and testing: run the test suite.