miniserve - a CLI tool to serve files and dirs over HTTP
For when you really just want to serve some files over HTTP right now!
miniserve is a small, self-contained cross-platform CLI tool that allows you to just grab the binary and serve some file(s) via HTTP. Sometimes this is just a more practical and quick way than doing things properly.
How to use
Serve a directory:
miniserve linux-distro-collection/
Serve a single file:
miniserve linux-distro.iso
Require username/password:
miniserve --auth joe:123 unreleased-linux-distros/
Bind to multiple interfaces:
miniserve -i 192.168.0.1 -i 10.13.37.10 -i ::1 -- /tmp/myshare
Features
- Easy to use
- Just works: Correct MIME types handling out of the box
- Single binary drop-in with no extra dependencies required
- Authentication support with username and password
- Mega fast and highly parallel (thanks to Rust and Actix)
How to install
On Linux: Download miniserve-linux
from the releases page and run
chmod +x miniserve-linux
./miniserve-linux
On OSX: Download miniserve-osx
from the releases page and run
chmod +x miniserve-osx
./miniserve-osx
On Windows: Download miniserve-win.exe
from the releases page and run
miniserve-win.exe
With Cargo: If you have a somewhat recent version of Rust and Cargo installed, you can run
cargo install miniserve
miniserve
Binding behavior
For convenience reasons, miniserve will try to bind on all interfaces by default (if no -i
is provided).
It will also do that if explicitly provided with -i 0.0.0.0
or -i ::
.
In all of the aforementioned cases, it will bind on both IPv4 and IPv6.
If provided with an explicit non-default interface, it will ONLY bind to that interface.
You can provide -i
multiple times to bind to multiple interfaces at the same time.
Why use this over alternatives?
- darkhttpd: Not easily available on Windows and it's not as easy as download and go.
- Python built-in webserver: Need to have Python installed, it's low performance, and also doesn't do correct MIME type handling in some cases.
- netcat: Not as convenient to use and sending directories is somewhat involved.
Releasing
This is mostly a note for me on how to release this thing:
- Update version in
Cargo.toml
. git commit
andgit tag -s
,git push
.cargo publish
- Releases will automatically be deployed by Travis.
- Update AUR package.