Added README

1 files changed, 66 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c84d17e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
+# short : A simple, privacy friendly URL shortener written in nim
+
+This repository contains code for a nim web service that can shorten a valid URL. The goals of the project are to be simple to use, light (about 7M of ram), self-hosted, open source and privacy friendly : anonymous usage, no tracking. I especially wanted an URL shortener that would display the target URL for people to review before clicking, and not simply redirect.
+
+It is also a learning project, being my first web service written in nim.
+
+## Contents
+
+- [Dependencies](#dependencies)
+- [Quick install](#quick-install)
+- [Usage](#usage)
+- [Building](#building)
+- [Running tests](#running-tests)
+
+## Dependencies
+
+nim is required. Only nim version >= 1.4.8 on linux amd64 (Gentoo) is being regularly tested.
+
+The following nim libraries will be pulled by nimble when installing :
+* jester
+* nanoid
+* nimja
+* tiny_sqlite
+
+## Quick Install
+
+To install, clone this repository then run :
+```
+nimble install
+```
+
+## Usage
+
+Launching the interpreter is as simple as :
+```
+short
+```
+
+The server needs to be started from a place with a `./data/` directory. It will open (or create if it does not already exist) a sqlite3 database in `./data/short.db`, then start listening on `0.0.0.0:5000` for http connections.
+
+## Building
+
+For a debug build, use :
+```
+nimble build
+```
+
+For a release build, use :
+```
+nimble build -d:release
+```
+
+## Running tests
+
+To run unit tests, use :
+```
+nimble tests
+```
+
+To debug a particular tests, use :
+```
+nim c --debugger:on --parallelBuild:1 --debuginfo --linedir:on tests/database.nim
+gdb tests/database
+b src/truc.nim:123
+r
+```