README

romitter

romitter is a Windows-native, Delphi-based nginx analog focused on:

• high nginx configuration compatibility
• drop-in operations for common nginx workflows
• practical Windows-first behavior for proxy workloads

Versioning and Release Notes

romitter uses semantic-style versioning with pre-release tags (major.minor.patch-label).

• Current: 0.1.2-alpha
• Previous: 0.1.1-alpha

Fix Pool: 0.1.2-alpha vs 0.1.1-alpha

• Added server-side HTTP/2 runtime path for TLS listeners with listen ... ssl http2.
• Added ALPN negotiation (h2 / http/1.1) during TLS handshake.
• Added HTTP/2 frame handling:
  • SETTINGS, HEADERS, CONTINUATION, DATA, WINDOW_UPDATE, PING, RST_STREAM, GOAWAY.
• Added HPACK decoder/encoder runtime components:
  • indexed/literal header representations
  • dynamic table updates
  • Huffman decode support for request header blocks
• Added HTTP/2 stream state handling for request/response lifecycle.
• Added HTTP/2-to-existing HTTP runtime bridge so existing location/proxy/file logic is reused for h2 streams.
• Added nginx.conf-style TLS listener ALPN setup via OpenSSL runtime bindings.
• Added worker_shutdown_timeout support as an upper bound for graceful shutdown/reload phase; when timeout is exceeded, runtime escalates to force stop/close remaining workers or client connections.
• Added runtime compatibility warnings for accepted-but-not-implemented directives (for example proxy_cache, access_log, gzip, daemon semantics).
• Applied events { multi_accept ... } in HTTP/stream accept loops.

Fix Pool: 0.1.1-alpha vs 0.1.0-alpha

• Added runtime support for proxy_protocol on HTTP listeners (listen ... proxy_protocol).
• Added runtime support for proxy_protocol on stream TCP listeners.
• Added parser support for stream listen ... proxy_protocol.
• Added listen ... http2 runtime compatibility path (directive is accepted at runtime; HTTP/2 frame engine remains iterative work).
• Added conflict checks for mixed endpoint options:
  • proxy_protocol and non-proxy_protocol cannot share one listen endpoint.
• Added top-level nginx directives:
  • master_process on|off
  • daemon on|off
• Runtime now honors master_process off (single-process mode).
• Reduced startup/runtime log noise in high-worker deployments:
  • shared listener reuse messages
  • repetitive listener startup messages
  • repeated control pipe busy retries
  • noisy TLS client-alert handshake logs

Why romitter on Windows

Official nginx on Windows is intentionally limited. romitter is designed to close that gap and support Windows-specific production use cases, including scenarios that are often unavailable or constrained in standard Windows nginx deployments, for example:

• stream proxying for TCP and UDP ports
• nginx-style runtime control commands (-t, -s reload|quit|stop)
• multi-worker process model with graceful lifecycle handling

nginx Compatibility

romitter aims to be nginx-compatible by configuration and operations:

• nginx syntax and context model (events, http, stream, server, location, upstream, include)
• nginx-like directive inheritance in http/server/location and stream/server
• nginx CLI-style control flow:
  • romitter -t ...
  • romitter -s reload ...
  • romitter -s quit ...
  • romitter -s stop ...

For typical reverse-proxy and stream (TCP/UDP) scenarios, existing nginx configs can be reused with minimal or no changes. Unsupported directives fail fast during config validation instead of being silently ignored.

Compatibility Docs

Compatibility details, including supported directives, partial behavior, and known TODO/no-op areas, are documented in:

• docs/config-compatibility.md

Binary Name Compatibility

You can rename romitter.exe to nginx.exe.

For standard automation patterns (including wrappers that call nginx -t and nginx -s reload with -p/-c), this works as a practical drop-in approach.

Feature Highlights

• HTTP reverse proxy with upstream balancing and retries
• streaming request body mode (proxy_request_buffering off)
• chunked request decoding + Expect: 100-continue
• stream module for TCP and UDP proxy
• TLS termination (OpenSSL runtime), SNI routing, per-server certificates
• static file serving, rewrites, try_files, error_page, allow/deny
• fast config test and runtime reload

Quick Start

1. Build romitter.dpr for Win64.
2. Ensure OpenSSL DLLs are available near the executable (libssl + libcrypto).
3. Run:

.\Win64\Release\romitter.exe -c conf\romitter.conf

4. Validate config:

.\Win64\Release\romitter.exe -t -c conf\romitter.conf

Command Line

romitter [-c file] [-p prefix]
romitter -t [-c file] [-p prefix]
romitter -T [-c file] [-p prefix]
romitter -s signal [-c file] [-p prefix]
romitter -v

Signals:

• stop = fast shutdown
• quit = graceful shutdown
• reload = config reload

Example Configs

Ready-to-run example configs are provided under:

• conf/examples/

They cover:

• minimal HTTP setup
• reverse-proxy setup
• stream TCP/UDP setup
• full showcase config with includes for generated http and stream blocks

Repository Layout

• src/ - Delphi source code
• conf/ - config files and examples
• docs/ - compatibility and operational documentation
• nginx/src/ - nginx source snapshot used for compatibility reference

License

This project is distributed under a BSD-2-Clause style permissive license (see LICENSE), allowing free commercial and non-commercial use.