On 16 February 2014 15:11, Dominic Hargreaves <d...@earth.li> wrote: > On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 11:10:20PM +1100, Carl Brewer wrote: >> Having just downloaded this latest SVN repo, a grep for "2.4" in the >> root dir shows a couple of changes, but no explicit mention of 2.4 >> support. >> >> Before I try it, does it actually support 2.4 yet? > > The Debian project is shipping mod_perl with httpd24 support > based on http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/perl/modperl/branches/httpd24/. > This appears to be good enough for our needs, so you might like to give > it a try (our packages are based on a somewhat older version of that > branch, and there seem to be quite a number of changes going in, so > it's worth giving that a go. I haven't heard about any current plans for > merging this to trunk, though. >
An update on the state of things regarding httpd-2.4 support in mod_perl: We are working hard to get this done and are 99% of the way there. Both volunteers and volunteers' time is limited, though, so progress has been slow. A lot of work has taken place in the httpd24 branch, and as Dominic says, some Linux distros are already shipping that. Further improvements to mod_perl have also been made in the threading branch, and in a bid to improve the state of httpd-2.4 support on Windows I recently merged the two together in a new branch called httpd24threading. This is where current development activity is taking place, and we are now sufficiently close that I expect this to be merged back to trunk soon. However, we still have several test failures on Windows. If that was the only problem then we would perhaps go ahead with a release now, simply documenting the known tets failures on Windows, but I think things are not quite there yet on other OSes either. Once we have things stable with most, if not all, tests passing on the likes of Mac OS X and some Linux systems then I epxect we will roll out 2.0.9. (There is currently a known issue with Apache::compat not working for both httpd-2.2 and -2.4. I'm not sure how that will be resolved yet, or if it will be sorted before we roll a release.) Regarding the slightly alarmist concerns about increasing numbers of people moving to httpd-2.4 and not being able to use mod_perl, whilst I do share that concern, it is worth pointing out that few active websites have actually moved to 2.4 yet anyway. I read this news story from Netcraft last week, and it sounds like Apache httpd developers are getting equally frustrated by so many people sticking 2.2 still!: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/02/07/are-there-really-lots-of-vulnerable-apache-web-servers.html ("Less than 1% of all Apache-powered websites feature an Apache/2.4.x server header"!!!) So fear not, httpd-2.4 support is coming, and hopefully quite soon too - and surely soon enough to not get left behind, given the slow rate of movement to httpd-2.4 anyway. If you want to help then please do try out the httpd24threading branch and report your results against httpd-2.2 and -2.4 with a recent perl. Patches for any problems found would, of course, be very welcome :-)
