File
DEVELOPERS.TXT

Path: | DEVELOPERS.TXT
Modified: | Tue Mar 31 13:58:42 +0200 2009

# Developers information

## Required software

The tests need the following software installed:

- All the usual Phusion Passenger dependencies.
- Ruby on Rails 2.0.1 (exactly 2.0.1)
- rspec >= 1.1.2
- mime-types >= 1.15

The following software is optional:

- RCov, for code coverage
- RDoc, for generating HTML Ruby API documentation
- Doxygen, for generating HTML C++ API documentation
- dot (part of Graphviz), for generating diagrams in HTML API documentation
- The font "Bitstream Vera Sans", used in the class diagrams. See www.gnome.org/fonts
- AsciiDoc >= 8.2.5, for converting various doc/*.txt documents to HTML

## Compiling Phusion Passenger

Run the following command to compile everything:

     rake

## Directory structure

The most important directories are:

lib/phusion_passenger
  The source code for the spawn server, which is written in Ruby.
ext/phusion_passenger
  Native extensions for Ruby, used by the spawn server.
ext/apache2
  The Phusion Passenger Apache 2 module (mod_passenger).
bin
  Executables.
doc
  Various documentation.
test
  Unit tests and integration tests.
test/support
  Support/utility code, used in the tests.
test/stub
  Stub code, used in the tests.

Less important directories:

lib/rake
  Rake tasks.
ext/boost
  A stripped-down and customized version of the Boost C++ library (www.boost.org).
ext/oxt
  The "OS eXtensions for boosT" library, which provides various important functionality necessary for writing robust server software. It provides things like support for interruptable system calls and portable backtraces for C++. Boost was modified to make use of the functionality provided by OXT.
benchmark
  Benchmark tools.
misc
  Miscellaneous tools.

## Tests

Run all tests:

     rake

Run just the tests for the Apache 2 module:

     rake test:apache2

Run just the unit tests for the Ruby spawn server:

     rake test:ruby

Run just the integration tests:

     rake test:integration

Note: some tests, such as the ones that test privilege lowering, require root privileges. Those will only be run if Rake is run as root.

## Documentation

Various developer documents can be found in ‘doc/*.html’.

The Ruby part‘s API reference is located in ‘doc/rdoc/’. The C++ part‘s API reference is located in ‘doc/cxxapi/’.