hi all I wanted to ping everyone about an idea I've been throwing around for a few months now. I'd like the ability to shuffle the declared hook ordering around, most likely during the post-config phase.
basically what I would like to be able to do is shift a hook from one place (say, HOOK_FIRST) to another. there are a few reasons I want to be able to do this, and most stem from some things I want to be able to do with mod_perl, but I'll go into that rationale later if someone asks :) putting reasons aside for the moment, here is a proof of concept module that kind of does what I'm after. http://perl.apache.org/~geoff/hook_order-test.tar.gz the main logic is in mod_hook_order.c, where it basically takes every mod_perl hook (which are by default registered as REALLY_FIRST) and moves them to HOOK_LAST during post-config. you can run the module if you have a mod_perl enabled server and Apache-Test installed, but the code is fairly straightforward (and largely stolen from mod_info). all in all, it's a fairly simple thing to do, but it makes a few things possible, most interestingly the ability to create a configuration directive that would allow users to choose the ordering of core processing the way they used to be able to in 1.3 (a la ClearModuleList/AddModule and without editing the source). another problem it might help to solve is when module writers encounter a situation where another module is registered REALLY_FIRST or REALLY_LAST and they want the spot. currently, I don't see any formal way to claim those spots for yourself except registering yourself as, say, REALLY_LAST + 10 or something. anyway, what I would like to try to do is take the logic in the prototype and create a formal apr_hook_get()/apr_hook_set() API that allows people access to the data that is there. an additional need would be to require each call to ap_hook_* to have a name for the hook as well, since modules can register mutliple callbacks for the same phase but there is no way to distinguish one callback from another in the current design. so, before I get started down the path of a bit of work, comments appreciated. --Geoff
