serve

serve starts a simple temporary static file server in your current directory and prints your IP address to share with colleagues.

It's based on a Gist by Paul Mach.

Install
- Windows
- macOS
- Linux
- Manually
Docker
Use
- Example
Build
- Packages

Install

We recommend installing serve with one of the following package managers, because they provide you with functionality such as automatic updates, instant availability as command in the PATH, easy removal, sandboxing etc.
But alternatively you can always install serve manually as well, see Manually.

Windows

The easiest way is to use the package manager Scoop:
scoop install serve

Another option is Chocolatey:
choco install serve

You can also have a look at the description in the Chocolatey Gallery on https://chocolatey.org/packages/serve/.

macOS

The easiest way is to use the package manager Homebrew:
brew tap philippgille/tap
brew install serve

Or in a single command:
brew install philippgille/tap/serve

Linux

The easiest way is to use the package manager Snap, which is installed by default on Ubuntu 16.04 and later:
sudo snap install serve

You can also have a look at the description in the Snap Store on https://snapcraft.io/serve.

Note: Due to restrictions by Snap, serve can only serve files in the user's $HOME directory.

Manually

With Go installed

go get github.com/philippgille/serve

Note: Requires your $GOPATH/bin directory to be in your PATH, which is usually the case.

Without Go installed

You can download the binary for your OS from the releases simply make it available as command in your PATH. See Manual Installation for details.

Docker

serve is also available as Docker image in the Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/r/philippgille/serve/

To start the Docker container, just run:
docker run -v ${PWD}:/share --network "host" philippgille/serve

-d "/share" is used as default flag, but you can overwrite it with any other flag. For all flags, see Usage below.

Note: When using Docker on Windows or macOS, it probably runs in a VM (Hyper-V on Windows Pro, VirtualBox on Windows Home). This means that the network interfaces and their IP addresses aren't the ones of your host machine, but the ones of the VM. These are usually not reachable from other peers in the network your host machine is in. You have to either change the VMs configuration or set up port forwarding on your host machine.

Use

$ serve -h
Usage of serve:
  -d string
        The directory of static file to host (default ".")
  -p string
        Port to serve on (default "8100")
  -t    Test / dry run (just prints the interface table)
  -v    Print the version

Press Ctrl+C in the terminal to stop the server.

Example

~/path/to/servable/files$ serve

Serving "." on all network interfaces (0.0.0.0) on HTTP port: 8100

Local network interfaces and their IP address so you can pass one to your colleagues:

      Interface      |  IPv4 Address   |              IPv6 Address
---------------------|-----------------|----------------------------------------
lo                   | 127.0.0.1       | ::1
eth0                 |                 | 
wlan0                | 192.168.178.123 | fe80::e7b:fdaf:ae5d:3cfa
virbr0               | 192.168.122.1   | 
br-8ef347e8a4e9      | 172.22.0.1      | fe80::42:c9ff:fed3:35a
docker_gwbridge      | 172.21.0.1      | 
docker0              | 172.17.0.1      | fe80::42:c6cf:fe3d:a554
veth0d522f4          |                 | fe80::307a:7fcf:fe3d:cba4

You probably want to share:
http://192.168.178.123:8100

When opening the URL http://192.168.178.123:8100 in a browser you see the directory you're serving. For example:

Build

To build serve by yourself:

Install Go
cd into the root directory of this repository
Execute: go build

Note: The binaries in GitHub Releases are shrinked with additional Go linker flags and UPX

To also make serve available as command in other directories:

Add $GOPATH/bin to your PATH if you haven't done that already when installing Go
Execute: go install

There are also build scripts for Windows and Linux for creating release artifacts (shrinked binaries for Windows, macOS and Linux):

Windows: build/build.ps1
Linux: build/build.sh

Note: They require Go and UPX to be installed

To build with a Docker container:

docker run --rm -v ${PWD}:/go/src/github.com/philippgille/serve -w /go/src/github.com/philippgille/serve golang build/build.sh noupx
Or with UPX:
docker run --rm -v ${PWD}:/go/src/github.com/philippgille/serve -w /go/src/github.com/philippgille/serve golang bash -c "apt update && apt install -y upx-ucl && build/build.sh"

Packages

For Scoop and Homebrew no packages need to be built. They use "manifests"/"formulae" and the binaries from GitHub Releases.

For releasing a new version, they need to be updated here:

For Snap a Git hook is set up in the Snapcraft dashboard to automatically build a new Snap on every commit, so for releasing a new version the file in this repository needs to be updated:

Snap: https://github.com/philippgille/serve/blob/master/snap/snapcraft.yaml

The Snap package can also be built manually, for example with this script which utilizes Docker:

Windows: build\build-snap-with-docker.ps1
Linux: build/build-snap-with-docker.sh

The Chocolatey packages need to be uploaded manually to Chocolatey here. The package can be built with this script:

Windows: build\build-chocolatey.ps1

The Docker image can be built like this:

docker build -f docker/Dockerfile -t philippgille/serve .

WrightKD/serve