Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Jacob Perkins]

Just to point it out, RH 7.4 is upgrading OpenSSL to include ALPN support, so 
http2 usage will likely grow greatly soon with one less dependency to carry 
around.


> On 2 Jun 2017, at 07:17, Yann Ylavic  wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Jun 2, 2017 at 2:14 PM, Jim Jagielski  wrote:
>> It sounds like there is some consensus that http/2 be no longer
>> tagged as experimental is that it be moved to RTC. I also sounds
>> like we wish to keep mod_proxy_http2 as experimental however
>> (and CTR).
> 
> My understanding (and whish) too.

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Yann Ylavic]

On Fri, Jun 2, 2017 at 2:14 PM, Jim Jagielski  wrote:
> It sounds like there is some consensus that http/2 be no longer
> tagged as experimental is that it be moved to RTC. I also sounds
> like we wish to keep mod_proxy_http2 as experimental however
> (and CTR).

My understanding (and whish) too.

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Jim Jagielski]

It sounds like there is some consensus that http/2 be no longer
tagged as experimental is that it be moved to RTC. I also sounds
like we wish to keep mod_proxy_http2 as experimental however
(and CTR).

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Jacob Champion]

On 05/31/2017 08:11 AM, Graham Leggett wrote:

+1 to no-longer-experimental.

+1 to RTC.


+1 to both.

--Jacob

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Yann Ylavic]

On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 2:23 PM, Eric Covener  wrote:
> On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 8:07 AM, Jim Jagielski  wrote:
>> There was discussion some time ago about dropping the "experimental"
>> tag from our HTTP/2 implementation. It is causing loads of people
>> to not use it, as well as allowing for the perpetuation of FUD that
>> httpd really doesn't support HTTP/2.
>>
>> I'd like for 2.4.26 to be the release that removes that tag. It
>> implies a transition to RTC in 2.4 for it, but I think that that
>> is workable and realistic at this point...
>>
>> Thoughts? Comments?
>
> I think we should drop the experimental label/treatment. If not now,
> it seems like it's effectively permanent in 2.4.

+1

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Eric Covener]

On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 7:10 AM, Jim Jagielski  wrote:
>>
>> - B. People come out and say: "when experimental is gone, I might finally
>> find the time to improving HTTP/2 support with the great ideas and/or long
>> time experience that I have!"
>>
>
> There is that as well... it's no good having a substantial module
> with very, very limited expertise shared and involvement.

I don't really think developers are sidelined by this directly, but
maybe indirectly by the adoption reduced by A).

-- 
Eric Covener
cove...@gmail.com

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Jim Jagielski]

> On Jun 1, 2017, at 4:40 AM, Stefan Eissing  
> wrote:
> 
> What could a change of "experimental" do?
> 
> - A. It could address the FUD. Which I assume is important for market shares. 
> And for people who have done serious investments (successful ones) in httpd 
> in the past, be it money or time.

Not so much market shares, for market share reasons, but simply
that people who could and should be using httpd for http/2 simply
aren't. It's a blocker to having more people use it, which means
less bug reports and less feedback on fixes, etc...

> 
> - B. People come out and say: "when experimental is gone, I might finally 
> find the time to improving HTTP/2 support with the great ideas and/or long 
> time experience that I have!"
> 

There is that as well... it's no good having a substantial module
with very, very limited expertise shared and involvement.

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Stefan Eissing]

> Am 31.05.2017 um 17:46 schrieb William A Rowe Jr :
> 
> I have the impression that the developers still believe HTTP/2
> proxy is still 'experimental' / work-in-progress. Notably, there is
> a large pile of duplicate functionality in the modules/http2/ tree
> which should already be promoted to httpd util commons, so
> one copy of these duplicated functions are shared by both
> mod_http2 and mod_proxy_http2 (as well as potential http/2
> enhancement modules).

The developer of all this agrees that mod_proxy_http2 should stay experimental.
I would even recommend to remove mod_proxy_http2 from 2.4.x, until someone
finds time to address the problems reported. It works well for me, but some 
people
observe large transfers not working on Windows, for example.

> I have the impression that mod_http2 implementation in 2.6 is
> already cleaner and more maintainable, owing to enhancements
> Stefan already contributed and those parts of the implementation
> that httpd 2.4 had subpar support for... leading to various bits of
> bubblegum and twists of bailing wire, which are harder to maintain
> without the 2.6 API fixes.

FYI: I can also assure that code between trunk and 2.4.x is identical
except ap_create_request(), introduced in trunk, that was never back-ported.

My stance on mod_http2's experimental status is that I do not really
have an opinion. People seem to have more time and energy available, 
the farther away from actual code the discussion runs. Which is contrary 
to how I operate.

So:
> Am 31.05.2017 um 14:07 schrieb Jim Jagielski :
> 
> There was discussion some time ago about dropping the "experimental"
> tag from our HTTP/2 implementation. It is causing loads of people
> to not use it, as well as allowing for the perpetuation of FUD that
> httpd really doesn't support HTTP/2.

What could a change of "experimental" do?

- A. It could address the FUD. Which I assume is important for market shares. 
And for people who have done serious investments (successful ones) in httpd 
in the past, be it money or time.

- B. People come out and say: "when experimental is gone, I might finally 
find the time to improving HTTP/2 support with the great ideas and/or long 
time experience that I have!"


On A, I am not interested. I will neither promote nor disapprove any change 
there. I just does not matter to me, personally. But if you want to talk 
about B, I am all ears!

Cheers,

Stefan

PS. Merit: the following people, beside myself, have contributed to 
the HTTP/2 efforts (to the best of my and svn praise memory):

- Yann did much work in analyzing crashes and made fixes
- Jim did the original import and added conn_rec* master
- Graham (minfrin) added ap_create_request() to trunk
- jfclere and jchampion did some code formatting/cleanups
- rjung added forgotten APLOGNOs
- jailletc and elukey worked a lot on the docs
- many, many people tested

Thank you!

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Eric Covener]

On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 11:46 AM, William A Rowe Jr  wrote:
> I have the impression that mod_http2 implementation in 2.6 is
> already cleaner and more maintainable, owing to enhancements
> Stefan already contributed and those parts of the implementation
> that httpd 2.4 had subpar support for... leading to various bits of
> bubblegum and twists of bailing wire, which are harder to maintain
> without the 2.6 API fixes.

I think 2.4 and trunk mod_http2 are nearly identical.  In 2.4 we have
a copy of trunks ap_create_request() to create the dummy request_recs,
and not much else substantial in the diff.



-- 
Eric Covener
cove...@gmail.com

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[William A Rowe Jr]

On May 31, 2017 1:32 PM, "Helmut K. C. Tessarek" 
wrote:

On 2017-05-31 11:46, William A Rowe Jr wrote:
> If my assumptions above are wrong, ignore this thought... but if
> the goal is to drive adoption of our 2.6 implementation of http2,
> then simply dropping "experimental" seems unwise. Upgrading
> its status from "experimental" (which I read as -alpha at best)
> to a "beta" release of mod_http2 in 2.4.26 might be a really good
> idea to drive interest in advance of 2.6, while averting a half-decade
> long support effort of that specific module on the already five year
> old stale branch.

This topic is also about perception. Most people won't use http2 in
production, if it is marked as experimental or beta. These people might
look at other server software instead.

How long will people have to wait for 2.6? This is a fair question,
because I have no idea what your plans are. But I guess it won't be for
a while (timeframe maybe even years?).


Very fair observation, which is the root of my question. If we don't intend
to support 2.4 http2 in parallel for years once 2.6 is released, those
users you mention would be wise not to deploy it in production. We see
plenty of httpd instances running 3-5 year old or much older versions.

Those users who keep their software refreshed frequently would be wise to
adopt http2 already, and those are the users we want to encourage.

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Helmut K. C. Tessarek]

On 2017-05-31 11:46, William A Rowe Jr wrote:
> If my assumptions above are wrong, ignore this thought... but if
> the goal is to drive adoption of our 2.6 implementation of http2,
> then simply dropping "experimental" seems unwise. Upgrading
> its status from "experimental" (which I read as -alpha at best)
> to a "beta" release of mod_http2 in 2.4.26 might be a really good
> idea to drive interest in advance of 2.6, while averting a half-decade
> long support effort of that specific module on the already five year
> old stale branch.

This topic is also about perception. Most people won't use http2 in
production, if it is marked as experimental or beta. These people might
look at other server software instead.

How long will people have to wait for 2.6? This is a fair question,
because I have no idea what your plans are. But I guess it won't be for
a while (timeframe maybe even years?).

Cheers,
 K. C.

-- 
regards Helmut K. C. Tessarek
lookup http://pool.sks-keyservers.net for KeyID 0xC11F128D

/*
   Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer for chaos and madness
   await thee at its end.
*/

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[William A Rowe Jr]

On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 7:07 AM, Jim Jagielski  wrote:
> There was discussion some time ago about dropping the "experimental"
> tag from our HTTP/2 implementation. It is causing loads of people
> to not use it, as well as allowing for the perpetuation of FUD that
> httpd really doesn't support HTTP/2.
>
> I'd like for 2.4.26 to be the release that removes that tag. It
> implies a transition to RTC in 2.4 for it, but I think that that
> is workable and realistic at this point...
>
> Thoughts? Comments?

If my understanding serves, "GA" would still be an inappropriate
title for the 2.4 branch... please review my assumptions...

I have the impression that the developers still believe HTTP/2
proxy is still 'experimental' / work-in-progress. Notably, there is
a large pile of duplicate functionality in the modules/http2/ tree
which should already be promoted to httpd util commons, so
one copy of these duplicated functions are shared by both
mod_http2 and mod_proxy_http2 (as well as potential http/2
enhancement modules).

I have the impression that mod_http2 implementation in 2.6 is
already cleaner and more maintainable, owing to enhancements
Stefan already contributed and those parts of the implementation
that httpd 2.4 had subpar support for... leading to various bits of
bubblegum and twists of bailing wire, which are harder to maintain
without the 2.6 API fixes.

I'm making the presumption that once we release 2.6, we will have
considerably less interest in backporting http2 enhancements back
to the 2.4 branch, certainly not over the timespan we backported
features from 2.4 back into 2.2 or 2.2 into 2.0. If this is true, leaving
the module as "not GA" in 2.4 leaves us much more latitude to focus
on only the critical and security corrections to 2.4 and put the energy
into further enhancing performance and usability in 2.6.

If my assumptions above are wrong, ignore this thought... but if
the goal is to drive adoption of our 2.6 implementation of http2,
then simply dropping "experimental" seems unwise. Upgrading
its status from "experimental" (which I read as -alpha at best)
to a "beta" release of mod_http2 in 2.4.26 might be a really good
idea to drive interest in advance of 2.6, while averting a half-decade
long support effort of that specific module on the already five year
old stale branch.

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Graham Leggett]

On 31 May 2017, at 2:07 PM, Jim Jagielski  wrote:

> There was discussion some time ago about dropping the "experimental"
> tag from our HTTP/2 implementation. It is causing loads of people
> to not use it, as well as allowing for the perpetuation of FUD that
> httpd really doesn't support HTTP/2.
> 
> I'd like for 2.4.26 to be the release that removes that tag. It
> implies a transition to RTC in 2.4 for it, but I think that that
> is workable and realistic at this point...
> 
> Thoughts? Comments?

+1 to no-longer-experimental.

+1 to RTC.

Further ABI breaking improvements can target httpd v2.6.

Regards,
Graham
—



smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Daniel Ruggeri]

+1!
-- 
Daniel Ruggeri


 Original Message 
From: Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com>
Sent: May 31, 2017 7:07:21 AM CDT
To: httpd-dev <dev@httpd.apache.org>
Subject: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

There was discussion some time ago about dropping the "experimental"
tag from our HTTP/2 implementation. It is causing loads of people
to not use it, as well as allowing for the perpetuation of FUD that
httpd really doesn't support HTTP/2.

I'd like for 2.4.26 to be the release that removes that tag. It
implies a transition to RTC in 2.4 for it, but I think that that
is workable and realistic at this point...

Thoughts? Comments?

Re: HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Eric Covener]

On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 8:07 AM, Jim Jagielski  wrote:
> There was discussion some time ago about dropping the "experimental"
> tag from our HTTP/2 implementation. It is causing loads of people
> to not use it, as well as allowing for the perpetuation of FUD that
> httpd really doesn't support HTTP/2.
>
> I'd like for 2.4.26 to be the release that removes that tag. It
> implies a transition to RTC in 2.4 for it, but I think that that
> is workable and realistic at this point...
>
> Thoughts? Comments?

I think we should drop the experimental label/treatment. If not now,
it seems like it's effectively permanent in 2.4.

HTTP/2 and no-longer "experimental"

[Jim Jagielski]

There was discussion some time ago about dropping the "experimental"
tag from our HTTP/2 implementation. It is causing loads of people
to not use it, as well as allowing for the perpetuation of FUD that
httpd really doesn't support HTTP/2.

I'd like for 2.4.26 to be the release that removes that tag. It
implies a transition to RTC in 2.4 for it, but I think that that
is workable and realistic at this point...

Thoughts? Comments?