What server does SproutCore run on?

SproutCore is a client-side application framework. As such, it is server-side agnostic.

No part of SproutCore “runs” on the server, and SproutCore contains no “server-side” libraries. A web server is only used to deliver plain old HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to the browser. From that point on, a SproutCore-based application runs entirely in the browser (and can easily run “offline”, with not network access at all).

Any server you can send HTTP requests to (which is all of them) can be used with SproutCore, via XHR calls from your SproutCore application. Currently known servers used with SproutCore applications include: Java, PHP, Rails, Django, Merb, WebObjects, and WebDav.

During development, SproutCore and your own HTML, JavaScript and CSS can be easily served up to the browser by Merb [SproutCore 0.9] or Rack [SproutCore 1.0] using the SproutCore buildtools and the included sc-server command. The sc-server command and SproutCore buildtools are not used when you are ready to deploy your SproutCore application to users.

When you are ready to deploy, SproutCore provides an sc-build command that can be used to generate a static directory of files that you can upload and serve from any web server (e.g. Apache). The files are combined, packed, and minified and are cache friendly. The same directory structure you using with sc-server during development is accepted by sc-build for deployment, making this a one-step process.