Congratulations and some 2.0 thoughts

[Howard Fear <hs...@pooh.pageplus.com>]

Hi all,

Congratulations on getting 1.2 out.  As frustrated as the list sometimes
got, I have to say that I admire everyone's determination to put out
a high-quality release full of features that actually work.  Just for
a moment, contrast that with the state of commercial servers for a
moment and feel really good about the work you've done.

I swapped jobs last September, so I haven't been able to participate
nearly as much as I'd have liked.  Web stuff is now pretty much purely
a hobby.  And probably won't be truly involved for 2.0 either
although I will try to do some modules and an include rewrite.

That said, my observations on 2.0.  [And I apologize in advance
for the ramble!]

2.0 promises to be a major rewrite, what with threads, stacked I/O,
new module abstractions, a new virtual host solution and so on.  I
think there's also some concensus of 'formalizing' a module developers
api.  Its also been suggested that the current interfaces (modules,
configuration, and so on) won't be 'sacred' and may be completely
revised.

This sounds like a pretty complete rewrite to me.  Perhaps 1.2 is
the completion of the 'third system' (ncsa as the first, shambala
as the second).  And its really beginning to show it.  Too many
dependencies in the code and too many unrelated features.

Approaching 2.0 as a new 'first system' effort suggests that
what's really needed is a small group to develop a new core around
threads, stacked I/O, and the start of a new module api.  Once
complete, the modules can be rewritten to get to the current level
of functionality and beyond.

As much fun as it would be to meet everyone, I'm not sure a developer's
meeting would help get this off the ground.  This would be more of a
4 or 5 person effort.  Of course, this risks losing the rest of the
team while its being built.  There are a couple of other things that
can be done in parallel including defining the module api (or at least
what module writers really need in the api), and reviewing the
configuration process.  The function of many of the existing modules
should also be reviewed and improved in the interim.  (Just as an
example, mod_dir could really use formatting options for the listing.)

All of which begs one important question.  We, the Apache development
team, exists because we, individually, needed the server to do specific
things.  So, what do we each, individually, really need from the
next release - and what do we want to work on?

That's a few thoughts to put into the mix.

--
Howard Fear      I'm just a country perl hacker Jim.        hsf@pageplus.com
                    http://www.pageplus.com/~hsf/           hsf@redcape.com