If I want to do REST in an IIS, should I go for WCF Web Api already NOW?

I need to create a REST API that runs on IIS and played with WCF Web Api. It seems to be able to do everything I want, in cont开发者_JS百科rast to plain WCF or the now deprecated WCF starter kit. I haven't really tried those, but conneg seems to be hard or impossible, and that's a deal breaker, as conneg is one of the many nice orthogonally designed features of HTTP and hence, REST-on-HTTP, that I intend to fully use to my advantage.

Question: As currently there is only a "Preview 4" version out (April 2011), and I could not find much on when MS expects to release it (except an impression it will be either this year or next year) - Should I use it already?

Especially as the source code is there and I could - worst case - go in and modify and build that myself, it almost feels safe to go production with a - well-tested - preview build.

Some more details: I want to start creating prototypes this week and the REST API will end up on production machines in a matter of a few months (this year). I expect the API to still change a little bit, and checking the activity on codeplex it seems to be under active development, but I'm fine with changing my code alongside those changes.

Web Api is in active development, and we are revving for a Preview 5 release shortly. As a matter of fact if you head over to codeplex you will see several recent commits to prove my statement.

In terms of when we will release, we can't say that at this point. However we are on a committed train to release and as we are releasing out-of-band similar to the framework, that gives us much more flexibility.

At Build next week, you'll hear more announcements about web api / our roadmap.

As to creating prototypes, there is no problem in doing that. We have several customers that are depending on the web api bits both internally and externally. As long as you understand that the bits are in development / will change, and that there is no guaranteed support on each drop (other than through codeplex) you are free to use the bits. The one restriction license wise is you cannot deploy them outside your company while they are in development.

Thanks Glenn

How about (non-WCF) alternatives that have already been released like OpenRasta?