Apache 0.8.2 note

[Alexei Kosut <ak...@nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us>]

Hello. I'm new on this list, having subscribed nine days ago at the
instruction of Brian Behlendorf. I hope I'm not out of place mailing to
it. If it's not appropriate, please tell me and I'll cease immediately. 

I've been running Apache 0.6.5 on two Unix boxes I administer, and I
recently downloaded Apache 0.8.2, and attempted to install it one of them,
a SPARCstation 2 running SunOS 4.1.1 (www.dal.net, for those interested). 
It compiled, installed and executed sucessfully, and it appears to work
great.  Congratulations to all that created it. 

That being said, I have two comments about the Apache 0.8.2 distribution 
(which also mostly apply to 0.6.5 also, actually):

1. The imagemap program, and perhaps even the entire cgi-src and cgi-bin
directories, is very old. It contains imagemap 1.2; the version released
with NCSA httpd 1.4 is 1.8. Granted, the imap module alleviates the need
for this, but it should still be kept updated, IMHO, for plug-in
compatibility with NCSA httpd. 

2. The -dist configuration files are missing example lines for some Apache
features (mostly the new ones in 0.8.x, but some old ones as well): 
VirtualHost, AddLanguage, XBitHack, imagemaps, asis files, and I think
that's it (though I'm most likely wrong). These features should have
example lines in the .conf files, even if commented out, to show how they
are used. There are also some other things wrong with these files - the 20
Alias limit no longer exists, I beleive, for example, and Rob McCool's
email address and the hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu URL don't really belong there,
do they?

3. NCSA httpd has a root-level Makefile that compiles the server, the CGI
programs, and whatever else is required. Maybe Apache should have one too,
or at least some indication of how to compile the server - if I wasn't
familiar with Unix source distributions, I might never find the
installation instructions in the src directory - the INSTALL file and
Configure script could also be moved up there, as could the default 
location for the httpd binary. (i.e. the src Makefile would compile to 
../httpd instead of httpd)

Speaking of the Configure script, mightn't it be a good idea to have it
determine what sort of machine and OS you have and configure the Makefile
appropriately? Every other config script I've ever seen does this, and it
surprised me that Apache's did not. Especially with the Makefile the
script outputs, it is very hard to know how to set it up for OSes other
than the default SunOS: one has to edit the Configuration file to
uncomment the correct AUX_CFLAGS line, and then run Configure. 

The INSTALL file touches on what is required, but doesn't go into enough
detail. It seems to assume that you have been "previously" installing
Apache or NCSA httpd, but if this group every hopes to expand Apache's
user base beyond those people currently using Web servers and target those
who are just starting to create web pages, the documentation needs to be
more clear and easier to understand. I realize that 0.8.2 has not been
made available to the general public but I suggest that you keep this in
mind for future releases. 

One last thing: On my web server, I've modified mod_userdir.c (as the
comment says, I am "actually interested in changing this *particular*
aspect of server functionality") to work on my site: I've made it so that
if the first character of the UserDir directive is a /, it works by
appending the userid to the end of the UserDir string - i.e. if I have
UserDir /some/path/here (which could be a CGI script, and this is how I
use it on my site), then /~foo/bar translates to /some/path/here/foo/bar.
If anyone is interested in using this, my modified userdir module is at
<http://www.dal.net/mod_userdir.c>. Since it only takes effect if the
UserDir line begins with a /, it could be used to replace the
mod_userdir.c in the distribution, and would still work fine with all
existing sites. Or not.

Thanks for reading this; it turned out to be longer than I had intended,
but I think that everything I've said is relatively important. At any
rate, I think Apache is a great HTTP server. Keep up the good work! 

--/ Alexei Kosut <ak...@nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us> /--------/ Lefler on IRC
----------------------------/ <http://www.nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us/~akosut/>
The viewpoints expressed above are entirely false, and in no way
represent Alexei Kosut nor any other person or entity. /--------------