Install yaws with Homebrew, apt, MacPorts, Nix

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• yaws

Project history

Contemporary articles place Yaws' origin around 2001 as Claes 'Klacke' Wikstrom's project. The official site describes it as a high-performance HTTP/1.1 web server written entirely in Erlang, supporting both standalone daemon mode and embedded mode inside another Erlang application.

The documentation presents Yaws as both a static web server and a dynamic-content system. Pages ending in .yaws can contain embedded Erlang snippets, and the manual describes appmods, streaming, sessions, FastCGI, reverse proxying, WebSockets, long polling, and embedded mode as part of the server's feature set.

The project moved to a public GitHub repository early in GitHub's history; the GitHub API records the erlyaws/yaws repository as created in 2009. The official site now points users to GitHub for source code, releases, tests, and current activity.

Adoption history

Yaws gained attention in the early Erlang web community because it turned Erlang's concurrency model into a practical web-server story. A 2011 IEEE Internet Computing article and related conference material framed it as a decade-old Erlang web server known for reliability, stability, and scalability.

Its adoption stayed specialized: it did not become the default general-purpose web server, but it mattered to Erlang users who wanted web serving without leaving the BEAM. It also became a platform for related Erlang web projects and examples, including appmods, yapps, and frameworks or applications that used Yaws as the HTTP layer.

How it is used

Yaws can be run as a normal webserver daemon from yaws.conf or embedded into an Erlang/OTP application. In development, users commonly run it interactively, serve static files, and add .yaws dynamic pages or appmods for request handling.

For package users, the key files are the yaws executable and yaws.conf. The package is useful when maintaining Erlang web applications, old Yaws sites, test servers, or embedded HTTP interfaces where using Erlang directly for request handling is the point.

Why package nerds care

Yaws is a classic example of language-runtime infrastructure becoming a package-manager artifact. Installing it pulls an Erlang-native web server into the Unix service model, with config files, examples, documentation, and a daemon command.

It also captures an important historical argument in server software: concurrency and failure isolation from Erlang processes, rather than thread-per-connection or process-per-connection designs, could be a practical foundation for web workloads.

Timeline

• 2001: Yaws is conceived by Claes Wikstrom, according to later IEEE and Erlang community histories.
• 2002: Early Yaws material and comparisons emphasize Erlang concurrency under many simultaneous connections.
• 2009: The erlyaws/yaws GitHub repository is created.
• 2011: Steve Vinoski's Yaws article and Erlang Factory talk present it as a decade-old Erlang web server.
• 2024: The official Yaws PDF manual continues to document standalone, embedded, dynamic-content, WebSocket, and proxy features.

Related projects

• Erlang/OTP is the runtime foundation for Yaws' process model and embedded use.
• ErlyWeb and Erlang Web are related Erlang web frameworks historically associated with Yaws.
• Inets is Erlang/OTP's own HTTP server alternative, often compared with Yaws in Erlang deployments.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/erlyaws/yaws
• https://erlyaws.github.io/
• https://erlyaws.github.io/yaws.pdf
• https://github.com/erlyaws/yaws
• https://steve.vinoski.net/pdf/IC-Yaws.pdf
• https://www.erlang-factory.com/upload/presentations/409/vinoski-ef-london-2011.pdf