On another mailing list, Jon fairly asked (since pretty soon, there will be
a final release of 4.0) and I like to inform also the Tomcat developers on
what my thoughts are:
Jon Stevens at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Does mod_warp really have the level of testing and stability in order to
> declare a release of Apache quality?
First of all, it's called WebApp Module :) :) :)
I don't think that the WebApp module will be considered "final" on the day
of the release, only in the past few weeks I started receiving comments and
bug reports on it. I know, it's my bad, but that's how things are...
Letely, I've been talking a lot with some of the core Apache HTTPd/APR
developers here in London, members of the ASF, and we shared some of our
visions on the levels of "quality" in the release cycles.
What came out was:
- "alpha" means "it has bugs, we know it, try it at your own risk"
- "beta" is something more along the lines "it works for us, we didn't find
any bug even after testing, but there might be still some glitches that
we didn't catch due to a not enough extensive test" (platform dependancy,
mainly)
- "release" indicates something that we trust, is proven to be working
without bugs by all those who tested them, so, let's kick it out.
I believe that Tomcat 4.0 right now is right there between beta and release.
Sometimes a new bug is found, but that gets fixed quite easily or in a
timely manner, and was something really weird (like the one that is
currently being fixed by Craig), but I trust that code, deeply... (we
seriously need to close most of those bugzilla items)
The WebApp module (or set of modules) is not yet there. Right now it is in
alpha, I know it has bugs. I'm shooting for a beta in a short time, and
another one alongside with the final release of Tomcat, but that's the best
thing I can do. I need extensive testing, and extensive testing can come
only from multi-platform deployment and usage: It's C code, and the JVM in
this helps us a lot.
My idea is to keep the distribution separate: I'm way more confident of the
code in Java for it than the C code, so, I could fairly assert that when 4.0
comes out, the Java part will be done. The problem remains on the C side of
things, and that's why I would propose a dual-release (as we did in the last
4.0 beta releases): the WebApp module is separated from the core trunk,
follows its own versioning, (the current versions, 1.0-tc40b6 and 1.0-tc40b7
are pre-alpha snapshots) and is an add-on to Tomcat... (the WARP protocol
handling connector, though will be final)
So, what do you think?
Pier
