Install HAProxy on Windows (Cygwin) – Good for testing

I’ve been developing an App for most of the summer. It’s using a few backend services so in production I use HAProxy in front of them.

The latest service uses socket.io and Node.JS, I couldn’t get it going because the local web server runs on a different port than the Node JS server (naturally). Due to the “Same origin policy” socket.io JS needs to run on the same port (and host). So I installed HAProxy to mimic how everything would run in Prod.

First thing first - Using the Cygwin setup.exe install GCC and G++

Download HaProxy 
http://haproxy.1wt.eu/

Next extract the HaProxy archive you downloaded, I was in my home directory (/home/courtney).

Go into the extracted folder

cd haproxy.x.y.z

Where  .x.y.z was the version number. Now compile:

make TARGET=linux28

If no error occurred  then install

make install

Once installed you need a HaProxy Config file. I’m using 1.4 so docs are here: 
http://cbonte.github.com/haproxy-dconv/configuration-1.4.html
 . You should have a look here 
http://haproxy.1wt.eu/#docs
 to find your specific version of the docs.

Once you have a HaProxy config file fire up the process using:

/usr/local/sbin/haproxy.exe -f haproxy.cfg

If like me you’re using Node or whatever else (WebSockety) with HaProxy then a good place to start is 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4360221/haproxy-websocket-disconnection/4737648#4737648

This post is short and shody but its more of a reference for me in the future I’ll probably have to do it again.