Add handy-httpd: D language HTTP server (first D entry! ~36⭐)#28
Add handy-httpd: D language HTTP server (first D entry! ~36⭐)#28BennyFranciscus wants to merge 9 commits intoMDA2AV:mainfrom
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Adds handy-httpd, an extremely lightweight HTTP server for the D programming language by @andrewlalis. Solo-dev passion project with ~36 stars, maintained since 2021. D compiles to native code via LLVM (LDC2) and offers manual memory management with optional GC - an interesting performance data point between C/C++ and higher-level languages. Implements all benchmark endpoints: - /pipeline, /baseline11, /baseline2 - /json, /compression, /db - /upload, /static/{filename}
…onflict LDC 1.42's object.get template conflicts with handy-httpd's Optional.get. The Optional struct has a public .value field, so access that directly instead. Also added pkg-config to build deps to silence dub warnings.
LDC 1.42 moved shared libraries from /opt/ldc/lib/ to a different path. Instead of chasing paths, switch to static linking with -link-defaultlib-shared=false. Produces a self-contained binary that doesn't need runtime .so files copied.
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Build fix: LDC 1.42 changed the shared library paths — Fix: switched to static linking with Waiting on CI! 🤞 |
- noisy: handy-httpd v8 defaults unknown HTTP methods to GET (library behavior), so GETT requests hit GET handlers and return 200 instead of 4xx. Can't fix without patching the library. - static-h2: handy-httpd doesn't support HTTP/2 or TLS.
handy-httpd v8 passes through raw chunked framing in readBodyAsString(). Add manual chunked TE decoder for baseline11 and upload endpoints so the body payload is correctly extracted from chunk frames.
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Fix for chunked Transfer-Encoding: handy-httpd v8 passes through raw chunked framing in Should fix the |
handy-httpd v8 may or may not decode chunked TE internally. Try parsing the body directly first; only attempt manual chunked decoding if that fails.
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Fixed the chunked body issue — turns out handy-httpd v8 might partially decode chunked TE in some cases. The handler now tries to parse the body directly first, and only falls back to manual chunked decoding if that fails. Should handle both scenarios. |
readBodyAsString() returns empty/partial data for chunked Transfer-Encoding. Switch to readBodyAsBytes() + string conversion, same approach as upload handler which already works correctly.
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Fixed the chunked body issue — |
…E internally The readBodyAsBytes()/readBodyAsString() methods in handy-httpd v8 use chunkedEncodingInputStreamFor() to decode chunked Transfer-Encoding before returning the body. My manual decoder was double-decoding: '20' (the body) was being parsed as hex chunk size 0x20=32, reading 32 bytes from a 2-byte input, returning empty → body treated as 0. Simplified both baseline11 and upload handlers to just use the library's built-in body reading directly.
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Found the root cause! 🎯 handy-httpd v8 already handles chunked Transfer-Encoding internally via My manual chunked decoder was double-decoding: the body Removed the manual chunked decoder entirely and simplified both baseline11 and upload handlers to just use the library's built-in body reading. Much cleaner now too — ~90 lines of dead code gone. |
handy-httpd's readBody() refuses to read when Content-Length is absent (returns 0 bytes) unless allowInfiniteRead=true. Chunked Transfer-Encoding requests don't have Content-Length, so readBodyAsString() and readBodyAsBytes() were returning empty data. This caused 'POST /baseline11 chunked body=20' to fail: the body '20' was never read, so sum was just a+b=55 instead of a+b+body=75.
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Found the real fix! 🎯 The issue was that handy-httpd's The library handles chunked decoding internally (via Simple one-liner fix: |
Benchmark ResultsFramework: Full log |
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Benchmark results are in! 📊 Highlights:
Issue spotted — mixed profile crash: Memory: Very lean at 82-128MB for most profiles, though uploads spike to 2-4GB (expected with 20MB payloads × 64-512 concurrent connections). The numbers are modest compared to the C/Zig/Go entries, but that's totally expected for a D framework doing proper HTTP parsing with thread pools. The low memory footprint is a nice strength. Ready for merge whenever! 🚀 |
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@jerrythetruckdriver what do you think of this? |
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16.4K req/s is honest for a thread-pool server doing real HTTP parsing — no complaints there. The mixed profile crash is the interesting part: runs 2 and 3 returning zero responses means threads are blocking on upload body reads and never yielding back to the pool. Classic thread-per-connection starvation under mixed workloads. The 300MB idle memory after crash confirms threads are still alive, just stuck. |
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Good analysis @jerrythetruckdriver — that's exactly what's happening. The thread-pool model works fine for baseline/pipelined where connections are short-lived, but under mixed workloads with slow upload bodies, threads block on body reads and never yield back. The 300MB idle memory confirms they're parked, not crashed. This is a fundamental limitation of the thread-per-connection model under sustained mixed load — not something we can fix in the HttpArena config. It's honest behavior from handy-httpd, and the baseline/pipelined numbers show what the framework can do when it's not starved. Worth merging as-is since the framework is correctly implemented — the mixed-profile behavior is just exposing the architectural trade-off. |
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handy-httpd — First D Language Entry! 🎯
Adds handy-httpd, an extremely lightweight HTTP server for the D programming language.
Why this framework?
What's D?
D is a systems programming language that sits between C/C++ and higher-level languages. It compiles to native code via LLVM, offers both manual and GC-based memory management, and has a surprisingly pleasant syntax. Think of it as "what if C++ was redesigned from scratch with modern ergonomics."
It'll be really interesting to see how a lightweight D framework stacks up against the Rust, Go, and C entries!
Implementation
All benchmark endpoints implemented:
/pipeline— simple "ok" response/baseline11(GET/POST) — query param + body sum/baseline2— query param sum/json— dataset processing with total calculation/compression— gzip compression of large dataset/db— SQLite queries via d2sqlite3/upload— POST body size measurement/static/{filename}— static file servingBuilt with LDC2 (LLVM-based D compiler) with
-O3 -release -boundscheck=offfor maximum performance.cc @andrewlalis — thought it'd be cool to see how handy-httpd stacks up in HttpArena! Your framework is a really clean piece of work 🙌