Not sure why this node was deleted, it doesn't seem
off-topic, merely, how do you say, demanding?
HTTP::Daemon should be a good start. There's actually
two of them, one by Ralf S. Engelschall (of mod_rewrite
fame, and more), and the other by Gisle Aas (LWP), though
of course, I could be seeing double.
I agree with tadman why was this node deleted? In my opinion Perl is the ultimate 'glue' language and well suited for this task. Chromatic himself has written a fully featured web server (his jellybean app).