Following up on yesterday's telecon, we should take note that
a release of the HTTPD trunk, to be labelled 2.3.0 and considered
the first of a series that will eventually become the next
stable release 2.4.
This is therefore a good time to review what we'd like to
see in a new Apache release.
A major interest for Sun should be dtrace integration,
which has started to happen. 2.4 can be fully dtrace-enabled
provided someone makes it happen.
Modules are not necessarily tied to a new major release, but
we're looking at the first release that'll feature Sun's
modules mod_sed and mod_privileges. I expect to advance
the work started with mod_privileges (making Apache
privileges-aware) further between now and a 2.4 release.
For information, some other new features now in trunk and/or
on the radar, and therefore expected to feature in 2.4, include:
- authentication/authorization revised again
- mod_session: support for user sessions
- Expression parser in httpd configuration
<If "expr evaluated at request time"> ... </If>
- "Simple" MPM, working towards simplifying handling
of platform-dependencies and architectural decisions
such as threads/nonthreads.
- drop_privileges architecture and modules
mod_unixd, mod_privileges
- Substantial updates to mod_cache including new backends
- mod_proxy_fcgi - FastCGI as a proxy provider
(not a cert - requires work).
- mod_wombat (Lua scripting integration)
Anyone interested in contributing to any of the above,
or who has other ideas for what you'd like to see in
the next Apache release, should be thinking about it now.
The proper forum for discussion is dev at httpd.apache.org,
but if you have half-formed ideas you'd like to discuss
offlist first, that's also an option.
--
Nick Kew
