werc - A sane web anti-framework

Werc is a minimalist web anti-framework built following the Unix and Plan 9 tool philosophy of software design.

Werc avoids the pain of managing collections of websites and developing web applications.

• Database free, uses files and directories instead.
• Written using the rc shell, leveraging the standard Unix/Plan 9 command toolkit.
• Minimize tedious work: eg., no need to ever write HTML, use markdown (or any other format) instead.
• Very minimalist yet extensible codebase: highly functional core is 150 lines, with extra functionality in modular apps.

Features

Here are some of the features provided by werc:

• Good integration with pre-existing content, you can add HTML or plain text files and they will be seamlessly integrated with the rest of the site.
• You can use your favorite tools (text editor, shell, file manager, etc) to edit, manipulate and manage data stored in werc.
• Designed to manage any number of 'virtual' domains that share a common style and layout from a single werc installation.
• Configuration and customization can be at at any level: global, per-domain-group, domain-wide, directory sub-tree, and single file.
• Can trivially run multiple (customized) versions of werc side by side.
• Very simple and flexible user management and permissions system.
• Applications can be easily combined: eg., add comments to your blog or wiki by enabling the 'bridge' app; or by enabling the 'diridir' wiki convert any document tree into a wiki.
• Can easily write werc 'apps' and extensions in any language! (But of course, rc is recommended).

Install Requirements

All you need is some Plan 9 commands (cat, grep, sed, rc, etc.), and an HTTP server with CGI support.

Werc runs on any Unix-like system where Plan 9 from User Space is available (this includes Linux, *BSD, OS X and Solaris), and on Plan 9.

If you use Debian you can install the 9base package that will provide all the required commands (but at the moment you need to install the version in sid, older versions in stable lack some of the required programs)

Werc can use any HTTP server that can handle CGI, and has been tested with at least Apache, Lighttpd, Cherokee, nhttpd, Hiawatha, and others.

Werc uses markdown by default (and the standard Perl markdown is included with the distribution), to format documents, but any other formatting system can be used.

Source

To get a copy of the latest stable code using mercurial, do:

hg clone http://hg.cat-v.org/werc/

You can also browse the online repository.

The latest development branch is located at http://gsoc.cat-v.org/hg/werc-dev/

Contact

For questions, suggestions, bugrepports and contributing patches you can join the werc9 mailinglist.

On irc, join #cat-v on irc.freenode.org

Links

• werc project at freshmeat - You can get new release notifications there.
• werc project at ohloh

License

Public domain, because so called 'intellectual property' is an oxymoron.

Alternatively if your prefer it or your country's brain dead copyright law doesn't recognize the public domain werc is made available under the terms of the MIT and ISC licenses.

Credits

Thanks to Kris Maglione (aka JG) for implementing rss feeds, for writing the awk rc-templating system, and other help and inspiration (some parts of the code were based on JG's diri wiki).

Thanks to Mechiel (aka oksel) for the md_cache script.

Thanks Garbeam (aka arg) for writing the original diri code and showing that writing complex web apps in rc was feasible.

And thanks to everyone else whom I have forgotten and that has provided fixes and feedback.

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