Twisted 1.2.0

Quote of the Release:

<hypatia> Why does dirdbm exist, exactly?
<spiv> hypatia: Because glyph is trigger-happy when it comes to
       writing persistence systems.
<spiv> "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a persistence system out of my hat!"
<spiv> "But that trick never works!"
<spiv> "This time for *sure*!"

For information on what's new in Twisted 1.2.0, see the ChangeLog file
that comes with the distribution, or http://twistedmatrix.com/ChangeLog.txt.

What is this?

  Twisted is an event-based framework for internet applications.  It includes a
  web server, a telnet server, a chat server, a news server, a generic client 
  and server for remote object access, and APIs for creating new protocols and
  services. Twisted supports integration of the Tk, GTK+, GTK+ 2, Qt, Mac OS X,
  or wxPython event loop with its main event loop. The Win32 event loop 
  is also supported. Twisted works with all Python 2.2 and 2.3 versions.

  Twisted currently supports the following protocols, all implemented in pure
  Python, most of them as both servers and clients:

    - SSH  
    - FTP
    - HTTP
    - XML-RPC (using xmlrpclib)
    - SOAP (using SOAPpy)
    - NNTP
    - SOCKSv4 (server only)
    - SIP
    - Jabber
    - SMTP
    - IRC
    - telnet
    - POP3
    - AOL's instant messaging TOC
    - OSCAR, used by AOL-IM as well as ICQ (client only)
    - DNS
    - MouseMan
    - finger
    - Echo, discard, chargen and friends
    - Twisted Perspective Broker
  
  For more information, visit http://www.twistedmatrix.com, or join the list at
  http://twistedmatrix.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/twisted-python


What can I do with it?

  Instructions for installing this software are in INSTALL.

  Although there is a lot of infrastructure support in Twisted, the immediately
  useful applications for the end-user are Twisted Web and Instance Messenger.
  Twisted Web is a webserver, written entirely in python, which is designed to
  be "zero maintenance".  We run the twistedmatrix.com website from it, and I 
  can testify that it has met its goals at least for me! The server can 
  comfortably handle 50 dynamic-content requests per second on fairly old 
  hardware (I have a Pentium II/333); however, since Twisted is entirely in
  Python, it's quite easy to script the webserver to do whatever you like!

  Instance Messenger is a multi-protocol chat client; it's easy to use: just
  run 'im', and an "account manager" window will pop up. You can create and
  modify accounts with it, and connect to/disconnect from them. Currently it
  can support Twisted's own chat service, Twisted Words, Internet Relay Chat
  (IRC), and AOL Instant Messenger (with the TOC protocol).


Unit Tests

  See our unit tests run proving that the software is BugFree(TM)::

   % admin/runtests

  Some of these tests may fail if you
   * don't have the dependancies required for a particular
     subsystem installed,
   * have a firewall blocking some ports (or things like
     Multicast, which Linux NAT has shown itself to do), or
   * run them as root.


  If you're feeling more brave, you can try the new "acceptance tests".  These
  require some setup and are mainly for the developers to decide if it's OK to
  release, but:

   % admin/accepttests

Basic Servers

  There are various servers you can build and run in the main distribution,
  although they won't be covered here.  Twisted servers do not have
  configuration files; instead, you instantiate a server and put it into a
  Pickle file; your servers and all of their component objects are saved in
  that file, and can be loaded with the Twisted Daemon.

  See http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/howto/basics, or in your archive 
  doc/howto/basics.xhtml for more information. 

  The normal type of server to create is a webserver.  You can run this
  command::

    % mktap web --path static

  See http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/howto/using-twistedweb, or in your 
  archive doc/howto/using-twistedweb.xhtml for more information about using
  the web server.

  A generic chat server::

    % mktap words

  This creates a chat server application, with 2 different interfaces and a web
  administration port.  Web administration can be conducted on port 8080, the
  IRC server on 6667, and a PB service on port 8787.

  You'll need to create an account with the web tool before you can log in,
  even using IRC (a "bot" will ask you for your password upon connection).

  So far the IRC gateway has only been tested with mIRC, XChat, and ircII; I
  believe that these are relatively diverse clients, but YMMV.

  The "Instance Messenger" is an instant messaging client to the various chat
  services that Twisted can interface with, which are IRC, AIM, and,
  twisted.words.  You can invoke it like this::

    % im

  A AOL Instant Messenger TOC Server is also available::

    % mktap toc -p 5190

  which creates the TOC server, running on port 5190.  To create a user, simply
  log in with the username and password you want.  If the name is not already
  taken on the server, it is created.  This creates a file called 'toc.tap'
  

Documentation and Support

  Although this is far from enough, some examples on how to use basic Twisted
  APIs are located in doc/examples; this might ease the learning curve a
  little bit, since all these files are kept as short as possible.
  The file doc/howto/index.xhtml contains an index of all the HOWTOs: this
  should be your starting point when looking for documentation.

  As of this release, I realize that Twisted's documentation is rather sparse.
  I encourage you to read the source code and docstrings, but if you're curious
  as to what Twisted can do, please feel free to join the mailing list::

    http://twistedmatrix.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/twisted-python
  
  or to join #twisted on irc.freenode.net for some live help.

  Part of the problem with documentation on a project like this is that
  everything seems obvious to me :-).  If you have trouble with a particular
  aspect of the Twisted system, I'd like to hear about what was confusing and
  why.  The process of your learning may be the material I build a tutorial
  from, so don't hesitate to ask!


Copyright

  All of the code in this distribution is (C) Matthew William Lefkowitz, AKA
  "Glyph". 

  Twisted is made available under version 2.1 of the GNU Lesser General Public
  License.  The included LICENSE file describes this in detail.


Warranty

  THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER
  EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES
  OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  THE ENTIRE RISK AS
  TO THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE IS WITH YOU.

  IN NO EVENT WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY
  AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE LIBRARY, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGES, EVEN IF
  SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
  DAMAGES.

  Again, see the included LICENSE file for specific legal details.
