swift/README.md
Aaron Rosen 841b8082ce Correct URL in readme
doc.openstack.org -> docs.openstack.org

Change-Id: Iacadb8f70cb94adc002c562a1068ff38be19a9fc
2013-10-07 22:27:34 -07:00

84 lines
3.0 KiB
Markdown

# Swift
A distributed object storage system designed to scale from a single machine
to thousands of servers. Swift is optimized for multi-tenancy and high
concurrency. Swift is ideal for backups, web and mobile content, and any other
unstructured data that can grow without bound.
Swift provides a simple, REST-based API fully documented at
http://docs.openstack.org/.
Swift was originally developed as the basis for Rackspace's Cloud Files and
was open-sourced in 2010 as part of the OpenStack project. It has since grown
to include contributions from many companies and has spawned a thriving
ecosystem of 3rd party tools. Swift's contributors are listed in the AUTHORS
file.
## Docs
To build documentation install sphinx (`pip install sphinx`), run
`python setup.py build_sphinx`, and then browse to /doc/build/html/index.html.
These docs are auto-generated after every commit and available online at
http://docs.openstack.org/developer/swift/.
## For Developers
The best place to get started is the ["SAIO - Swift All In One"](http://docs.openstack.org/developer/swift/development_saio.html).
This document will walk you through setting up a development cluster of Swift
in a VM. The SAIO environment is ideal for running small-scale tests against
swift and trying out new features and bug fixes.
You can run unit tests with `.unittests` and functional tests with
`.functests`.
### Code Organization
* bin/: Executable scripts that are the processes run by the deployer
* doc/: Documentation
* etc/: Sample config files
* swift/: Core code
* account/: account server
* common/: code shared by different modules
* middleware/: "standard", officially-supported middleware
* ring/: code implementing Swift's ring
* container/: container server
* obj/: object server
* proxy/: proxy server
* test/: Unit and functional tests
### Data Flow
Swift is a WSGI application and uses eventlet's WSGI server. After the
processes are running, the entry point for new requests is the `Application`
class in `swift/proxy/server.py`. From there, a controller is chosen, and the
request is processed. The proxy may choose to forward the request to a back-
end server. For example, the entry point for requests to the object server is
the `ObjectController` class in `swift/obj/server.py`.
## For Deployers
Deployer docs are also available at
http://docs.openstack.org/developer/swift/. A good starting point is at
http://docs.openstack.org/developer/swift/deployment_guide.html
You can run functional tests against a swift cluster with `.functests`. These
functional tests require `/etc/swift/test.conf` to run. A sample config file
can be found in this source tree in `test/sample.conf`.
## For Client Apps
For client applications, official Python language bindings are provided at
http://github.com/openstack/python-swiftclient.
Complete API documentation at
http://docs.openstack.org/api/openstack-object-storage/1.0/content/
----
For more information come hang out in #openstack-swift on freenode.
Thanks,
The Swift Development Team