Totally agree. That's why we as mod_proxy commit to cutting a release of
the web server too. Then users have what they want, in one package. Or a
generic "apache rollup" build with the non-core modules put in.
Mod_rewrite too?
Chuck
On Thursday, April 19, 2001, at 04:24 PM, Graham Leggett wrote:
Chuck Murcko wrote:
Hey, I was talking to Theo and he suggested we try doing something for
proxy like the FreeBSD ports idea: when someone installs, they try to
go
get the latest releases of proxy, etc. from somewhere.
What do you guys think? It might make the outcome of the current
new-httpd discussion workable.
To be honest, I'm not sure if much of this hybrid
splitting-off-bits-of-server stuff is that good an idea.
The first and main concern should always be ease of use for the end
user. This is currently not as good as it should be, splitting
everything off simply makes it worse.
When I was involved with the Ericsson webserver farm, upgrading the
server took absolute ages and was a complete pain in the ass - httpd,
the mod_ssl patches, external LDAP modules, our custom fixes that had
not made it into the server yet had to be combined, compiled and built -
a task that took over two hours, following our custom HOWTO and
incorporating the back-out plan. This nightmare needs to get easier in
v2.0 - not worse.
However we decide to handle the actual development (separate CVS,
whatever) the key important thing is that an "official" Apache release
includes a stable version of APR, APR-util, Proxy, etc all inside the
box, and all the user has to do is unpack the code, ./configure
--options ; make ; make install.
If we don't do this, as far as the end user is concerned none of these
functions will exist, simply because it's too much work to enable them,
and useful functionality will be lost.
Chuck Murcko
Topsail Group
http://www.topsail.org/
