-Contributors looking for a mission:
-
- * Just do an egrep on "TODO" or "XXX" in the source.
-
- * Review the "PatchAvailable" bugs in the bug database.
- Append a comment saying "Reviewed and tested".
-
- * Open bugs in the bug database.
-
-CURRENT RELEASE NOTES:
-
- * When the CVS->SVN is done, there's a bogus avendor branch that should be
- removed from most files. The branch was created 4/27/2004. It's safest
- (and easiest) for now just to leave it in there; the MAIN branch and the
- APACHE_2_0_BRANCH are untouched and unharmed. --jwoolley
-
-RELEASE SHOWSTOPPERS:
-
- * Convert httpd-2.x to Subversion. Yes, we've voted on this a billion
- times on dev@httpd, but let's make this one official. Majority rules.
-
- +1: jerenkrantz
-
- * Handling of non-trailing / config by non-default handler is broken
- http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=apache-httpd-dev&m=105451701628081&w=2
- jerenkrantz asks: Why should this block a release?
-
- * the edge connection filter cannot be removed
- http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=apache-httpd-dev&m=105366252619530&w=2
- jerenkrantz asks: Why should this block a release?
-
-CURRENT VOTES:
-
- * Promote mod_cache from experimental to non-experimental
- status (keep issues noted below in EXPERIMENTAL MODULES as
- items to be addressed as a supported module).
- +1: jerenkrantz
- +0: jim, bnicholes
- -1: stoddard
- There are a couple of problems that need to be resolved
- before this module is moved out of experimental.
- 1) We need to at least review and comment on the RFC violations
- 2) Resolve issue of how to cache page fragements (or perhaps -if- we
- want to cache page fragements). Today, mod_cache/mod_mem_cache
- will cache #include 'virtual' requests (but not #include 'file'
- requests). This was accomplished by making CACHE_IN a
- CONTENT_SET-1 filter to force it to run before the SUBREQ_CORE
- filter. But now responses cannot be cached that include the
- effects of having been run through CONTENT_SET filters
- (mod_deflate, mod_expires, etc). We could rerun all the
- CONTENT_SET filters on the cached response, but this will not
- work in all cases. For example, mod_expires relies on installing
- the EXPIRATION filter during fixups. Contents served out of
- mod_cache (out of the quick_handler) bypass -all- the request
- line server hooks (Ryan really hated this. It is great for
- performance, but bad because of the complications listed above).
-
- jerenkrantz: I think it's time. We've done a *lot* of work to it, and
- we think most of the blatant RFC violations are now gone.
- mod_cache just belongs in cache/. There may still be bugs,
- but not likely to be major ones. Note that I'm not moving
- *anything* until we switch to SVN.
-
- * httpd-std.conf and friends
-
- a) httpd-std.conf should be tailored by install (from src or
- binbuild) even if user has existing httpd.conf
- +1: trawick, slive, gregames, ianh, Ken, wrowe, jwoolley, jim, nd,
- erikabele
- wrowe - prefer httpd.default.conf to avoid ambiguity with cvs
-
- b) tailored httpd-std.conf should be copied by install to
- sysconfdir/examples
- -0: striker
-
- c) tailored httpd-std.conf should be installed to
- sysconfdir/examples or manualdir/exampleconf/
- +1: slive, trawick, Ken, nd (prefer the latter), erikabele
-
- d) Installing a set of default config files when upgrading a server
- doesn't make ANY sense at all.
- +1: ianh - medium/big sites don't use 'standard config' anyway, as it
- usually needs major customizations
- -1: Ken, wrowe, jwoolley, jim, nd, erikabele
- wrowe - diff is wonderful when comparing old/new default configs,
- even for customized sites that ianh mentions
- jim - ... assuming that the default configs have been updated
- with the required inline docs to explain the
- changes
-
- * If the parent process dies, should the remaining child processes
- "gracefully" self-terminate. Or maybe we should make it a runtime
- option, or have a concept of 2 parent processes (one being a
- "hot spare").
- See: Message-ID: <3C58232C.FE91F19F@Golux.Com>
-
- Self-destruct: Ken, Martin, Lars
- Not self-destruct: BrianP, Ian, Cliff, BillS
- Make it runtime configurable: Aaron, jim, Justin, wrowe, rederpj, nd
-
- /* The below was a concept on *how* to handle the problem */
- Have 2 parents: +1: jim
- -1: Justin, wrowe, rederpj, nd
- +0: Lars, Martin (while standing by, could it do
- something useful?)
-
- * Make the worker MPM the default MPM for threaded Unix boxes.
- +1: Justin, Ian, Cliff, BillS, striker, wrowe, nd
- +0: BrianP, Aaron (mutex contention is looking better with the
- latest code, let's continue tuning and testing), rederpj, jim
- -0: Lars
-
-RELEASE NON-SHOWSTOPPERS BUT WOULD BE REAL NICE TO WRAP THESE UP:
-
- * Patches submitted to the bug database:
- http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&product=Apache+httpd-2.0&keywords=PatchAvailable
-
- * Filter stacks and subrequests, redirects and fast redirects.
- There's at least one PR that suffers from the current unclean behaviour
- (which lets the server send garbage): PR 17629
- nd says: Every subrequest should get its own filter stack with the
- subreq_core filter as bottom-most. That filter does two things:
- - swallow EOS buckets
- - redirect the data stream to the upper request's (rr->main)
- filter chain directly after the subrequest's starting
- point.
- Once we have a clean solution, we can try to optimize
- it, so that the server won't be slow down too much.
-
- * RFC 2616 violations.
- Closed PRs: 15857.
- Open PRs: 15852, 15859, 15861, 15864, 15865, 15866, 15868, 15869,
- 15870, 16120, 16125, 16126, 16133, 16135, 16136, 16137,
- 16138, 16139, 16140, 16142, 16518, 16520, 16521,
- jerenkrantz says: need to decide how many we need to backport and/or
- if these rise to showstopper status.
- wrowe suggests: it would be nice to see "MUST" v.s. "SHOULD" v.s. "MAY"
- out of this list, without reviewing them individually.
-
- * There is a bug in how we sort some hooks, at least the pre-config
- hook. The first time we call the hooks, they are in the correct
- order, but the second time, we don't sort them correctly. Currently,
- the modules/http/config.m4 file has been renamed to
- modules/http/config2.m4 to work around this problem, it should moved
- back when this is fixed.
-
- OtherBill offers that this is a SERIOUS problem. We do not sort
- correctly by the ordering arguments passed to the register hook
- functions. This was proven when I reordered the open_logs hook
- to attempt to open the error logs prior to the access logs. Possibly
- the entire sorting code needs to be refactored.
-
- * pipes deadlock on all platforms with limited pipe buffers (e.g. both
- Linux and Win32, as opposed to only Win32 on 1.3). The right solution
- is either GStein's proposal for a "CGI Brigade", or OtherBill's proposal
- for "Poll Buckets" for "Polling Filter Chains". Or maybe both :-)
-
- * All handlers should always send content down even if r->header_only
- is set. If not, it means that the HEAD requests don't generate the
- same headers as a GET which is wrong.
-
- * HP/UX 10.20: compile breakage in APR. Looks like it should be easy
- to fix, probably just some extraneous #include's that are fouling
- things up.
- PR: 9457
- Jeff: See my reply and patch in the PR (and previous commit to
- stop using "pipe" as a field name). If patch is committed, we
- should be okay. I'll wait to see if the user tests the patch.
- Update by Jeff 20020722: I got an account on HP 10.20. It looks
- like some of the APR thread detection is screwed up. If we find
- pthread.h but we can't compile the pthread test program we still
- think we can use threads. For that reason, the patch I posted
- to the PR won't work as-is since a failed compile of the test
- program means nothing.
-
- * exec cmd and suexec arg-passing enhancements
- Status: Patches proposed
- Message-ID: <20020526041748.A29148@prodigy.Redbrick.DCU.IE>
- (see the "proc.patch" and "suexec-shell.patch" links in this message)
-
- * The 2.0.36 worker MPM graceless shutdown changes work but are
- a bit clunky on some platforms; eg, on Linux, the loop to
- join each worker thread seems to hang, and the parent ends up
- killing off the child with SIGKILL. But at least it shuts down.
-
- * --enable-mods-shared="foo1 foo2" is busted on Darwin. Pier
- posted a patch (Message-ID: <B8DBBE8D.575A%pier@betaversion.org>).
-
- * We do not properly substitute the prefix-variables in the configuration
- scripts or generated-configs. (i.e. if sysconfdir is etc,
- httpd-std.conf points to conf.)
-
- * If any request gets through ap_process_request_internal() and is
- scheduled to be served by the core handler, without a flag that this
- r->filename was tested by dir/file_walk, we need to 500 at the very
- end of the ap_process_request_internal() processing so sub_req-esters
- know this request cannot be run. This provides authors of older
- modules better compatibility, while still improving the security and
- robustness of 2.0.
-
- Status: still need to decide where this goes, OtherBill comments...
- Message-ID: <065701c14526$495203b0$96c0b0d0@roweclan.net>
- [Deleted comments regarding the ap_run_handler phase, as irrelevant
- as BillS points out that "common case will be caught in
- default_handler already (with the r->finfo.filetype == 0 check)"
- and the issue is detecting this -before- we try to run the req.]
-
- gregames says: can this happen somehow without a broken module
- being involved? If not, why waste cycles trying to defend against
- potential broken modules? It seems futile.
- wrowe counters: no, it shouldn't happen unless the module is broken.
- But the right answer is to fail the request up-front in dir/file
- walk if the path was entirely invalid; and we can't do that either
- UNTIL 2.1 or we break modules that haven't hooked map_to_storage.
-
- * With AP_MODE_EXHAUSTIVE in the core, it is finally clear to me
- how the Perchild MPM should be re-written. It hasn't worked
- correctly since filters were added because it wasn't possible to
- get the content that had already been written and the socket at
- the same time. This mode lets us do that, so the MPM can be
- fixed.
-
- * Can a static httpd be built reliably?
- Message-ID: <20020207142751.T31582@clove.org>
-
- * [Ken] Test suite failures:
- o worker is also failing some of the 'cgi' subtests
- (see <URL:http://Source-Zone.Org/Apache/regression/>):
- Justin says: "Worker should be fine and passes httpd-test here.
- I think it's a perl or a httpd-test problem."
-
- * Usage of APR_BRIGADE_NORMALIZE in core_input_filter should be
- removed if possible.
- Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0201202232430.318-100000@deepthought.cs.virginia.edu>
- Jeff wonders if we still care about this. It is no longer an
- API issue but simply an extra trip through the brigade.
-
- * The Add...Filter and Set...Filter directives do not allow the
- administrator to order filters, beyond the order of filename (mime)
- extensions. It isn't clear if Set...Filter(s) should be inserted
- before or after the Add...Filter(s) which are ordered by sequence of
- filename extensions. At minimum, some sort of +-[0-10] syntax seems
- like a nice solution. See ROADMAP.
-
- * Get perchild to work on platforms other than Linux. This
- will require a portable mechanism to pass data and file/socket
- descriptors between vhost child groups. An API was proposed
- on dev@apr:
- Message-ID: <20020111115006.K1529@clove.org>
-
- * Try to get libtool inter-library dependency code working on AIX.
- Message-ID: <cm3n10lx555.fsf@rdu163-40-092.nc.rr.com>
-
- Justin says: If we get it working on AIX, we can enable this
- on all platforms and clean up our build system
- somewhat.
- Jeff says: I thought I tested a patch for you sometime in
- January that you were going to commit within a few
- days.
-
- * Handling of %2f in URIs. Currently both 1.3 and 2.0
- completely disallow %2f in the request URI path (see
- ap_unescape_url() in util.c). It's permitted and passed
- through in the query string, however. Roy says the
- original reason for disallowing it, from five years ago,
- was to protect CGI scripts that applied PATH_INFO to
- a filesystem location and which might be tricked by
- ..%2f..%2f(...). We *should* allow path-info of the
- form 'http://foo.com/index.cgi/path/to/path%2finfo'.
- Since we've revamped a lot of our processing of path
- segments, it would be nice to allow this, or at least
- allow it conditionally with a directive.
-
- OtherBill adds that %2f as the SECOND character of a multibyte
- sequence causes the request to fail! This happens notably in
- the ja-jis encoding.
-
- * FreeBSD, threads, and worker MPM. All seems to work fine
- if you only have one worker process with many threads. Add
- a second worker process and the accept lock seems to be
- lost. This might be an APR issue with how it deals with
- the child_init hook (i.e. the fcntl lock needs to be resynced).
- More examination and analysis is required.
- Status: This has also been reported on Cygwin.
- FreeBSD 4.7 was reputed to have 'fixed' threads. Not.
- FreeBSD 5.2-RC is a confirmed fix w/either libkse or libthr.
- [libc_r, still the default, does not serve any pages w/worker;
- so on FreeBSD 5.2, you must use libmap.conf (see man page).]
- Work needs to be done to get APR to try to be knowledgable that
- libkse/libthr are acceptable. Still not recommended for the
- default since libc_r is still broken.
- Message-ID: <3C2CC514.8EF3BED1@wapme-systems.de> (cygnus)
-
- * There is increasing demand from module writers for an API
- that will allow them to control the server à la apachectl.
- Reasons include sole-function servers that need to die if
- an external dependency (e.g., a database) fails, et cetera.
- Perhaps something in the (ever more abused) scoreboard?
-
- On the other hand, we already have a pipe that goes between parent
- and child for graceful shutdown events, along with an API that
- can be used to send a message down that pipe. In threaded MPMs,
- it is easy enough to make that one pipe be used for graceful
- and graceless events, and it is also easy to open that pipe
- to both parent and child for writing. Then we just need to
- figure out how to do graceless on non-threaded MPMs.
-
- * Allow the DocumentRoot directive within <Location > scopes? This
- allows the beloved (crusty) Alias /foo/ /somepath/foo/ followed
- by a <Directory /somepath/foo> to become simply
- <Location /foo/> DocumentRoot /somefile/foo (IMHO a bit more legible
- and in-your-face.) DocumentRoot unset would be accepted [and would
- not permit content to be served, only virtual resources such as
- server-info or server-status.
- This proposed change would _not_ depricate Alias.
- striker: See the thread starting with Message-ID:
- JLEGKKNELMHCJPNMOKHOGEEJFBAA.striker@apache.org.
-
- * Win32: Rotatelogs sometimes is not terminated when Apache
- goes down hard. FirstBill was looking at possibly tracking the
- child's-child processes in the parent process.
- stoddard: Shared scoreboard might offer a good way for the parent
- to keep track of 'other child' processes and whack them if the child
- goes down.
- Other thoughts on walking the process chain using the NT kernel
- have also been proposed on APR.
-
- * Eliminate unnecessary creation of pipes in mod_cgid
-
- * Combine log_child and piped_log_spawn. Clean up http_log.c.
- Common logging API.
-
- * Platforms that do not support fork (primarily Win32 and AS/400)
- Architect start-up code that avoids initializing all the modules
- in the parent process on platforms that do not support fork.
-
- * There are still a number of places in the code where we are
- losing error status (i.e. throwing away the error returned by a
- system call and replacing it with a generic error code)
-
- * Mass vhosting version of suEXEC.
-
- * All DBMs suffer from confusion in support/dbmmanage (perl script) since
- the dbmmanage employs the first-matched dbm format. This is not
- necessarily the library that Apache was built with. Aught to
- rewrite dbmmanage upon installation to bin/ with the proper library
- for predictable mod_auth_dbm administration.
- Questions; htdbm exists, time to kill dbmmanage, or does it remain
- useful as a perl dbm management example? If we keep it,
- do we address the issue above?
-
- * Integrate mod_dav.
- Some additional items remaining:
- - case_preserved_filename stuff
- (use the new canonical name stuff?)
- - find a new home for ap_text(_header)
- - is it possible to remove the DAV: namespace stuff from util_xml?
-
- * ap_core_translate() and its use by mod_mmap_static and mod_file_cache
- are a bit wonky. The function should probably be exposed as a utility
- function (such as ap_translate_url2fs() or ap_validate_fs_url() or
- something). Another approach would be a new hook phase after
- "translate" which would allow the module to munge what the
- translation has decided to do.
- Status: Greg +1 (volunteers)
-
- * Explore use of a post-config hook for the code in http_main.c which
- calls ap_fixup_virutal_hosts(), ap_fini_vhost_config(), and
- ap_sort_hooks() [to reduce the logic in main()]
-
- * read the config tree just once, and process N times (as necessary)
-
- * (possibly) use UUIDs in mod_unique_id and/or mod_usertrack
-
- * (possibly) port the bug fix for PR 6942 (segv when LoadModule is put
- into a VirtualHost container) to 2.0.
-
- * shift stuff to mod_core.h
-
- * callers of ap_run_create_request() should check the return value
- for failure (Doug volunteers)
-
- * Win32: Get Apache working on Windows 95/98. The following work
- (at least) needs to be done:
- - Document warning that OSR2 is required (for Crypt functions, in
- rand.c, at least.) This could be resolved with an SSL library, or
- randomization in APR itself.
- - Bring the Win9xConHook.dll from 1.3 into 2.0 (no sense till it
- actually works) and add in a splash of Win9x service code.
-
- * Fix the worker MPM to use POD to kill child processes instead
- of ap_os_killpg, regardless of how they should die.
-
- * Scoreboard structures could be changed in the future such that
- proper alignment is not maintained, leading to segfaults on
- some systems. Cliff posted a patch to deal with this issue but
- later recanted. See this message to dev@apr.apache.org:
- Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0203011354090.16457-200000@deepthought
- .cs.virginia.edu>
-
- * When sufficiently tested, the AllowEncodedSlashes/%2f patch
- needs to be backported to 2.0 and 1.3.
-
- * APXS either needs to be fixed completely for use when apr is out of tree,
- or it should drop query mode altogether, and we just grow an
- httpd-config or similar arrangement.
- To quote a discussion in STATUS earlier:
-
- thommay: this doesn't fix all the problems with apxs and out of
- tree apr/apr-util, but it's a good start. There's still the
- query cases; but I'm beginning to think that in these cases
- the app should be querying ap{r,u}-config directly
- gstein: agreed. apxs should deprecate the -q flag
-
-TODO ISSUES REMAINING IN MOD_SSL:
-
- * In order to use a DSO version of mod_ssl we have to link with
- -lssl and -lcrypto. A workaround is in place right now where the
- entire EXTRA_LIBS macro is being appended to the objects list, but
- this is a hack. We should either revamp the APACHE_CHECK_SSL_TOOLKIT
- autoconf function or come up with some other autoconf checks to
- search for libssl and libcrypto and properly add them to mod_ssl's
- link flags.
-
- * SSL renegotiations in combination with POST request
-
- * Port or dispose all code inside #if 0...#endif blocks that remain
- from the porting effort.
-
- * Do we need SSL_set_read_ahead()?
-
- * the ssl_expr api is NOT THREAD SAFE. race conditions exist:
- -in ssl_expr_comp() if SSLRequire is used in .htaccess
- (ssl_expr_info is global)
- -is ssl_expr_eval() if there is an error
- (ssl_expr_error is global)
-
- * SSLRequire directive (parsing of) leaks memory
-
- * Diffie-Hellman-Parameters for temporary keys are hardcoded in
- ssl_engine_dh.c, while the comment in ssl_engine_kernel.c says:
- "it is suggested that keys be changed daily or every 500
- transactions, and more often if possible."
-
- * ssl_var_lookup could be rewritten to be MUCH faster
-
- * CRL callback should be pluggable
-
- * session cache store should be pluggable
-
- * init functions should return status code rather than ssl_die()
-
- * ssl_engine_pphrase.c needs to be reworked so it is generic enough
- to also decrypt proxy keys
-
- * the shmcb code should just align its memory segment rather than
- jumping through all the "safe" memcpy and memset hoops
-
-WISH LIST
- * mod_proxy performance: when mod_proxy is configured to do proxy
- gateway (aka reverse proxy), it would be nice to be able to reuse
- connections to the backend servers. Now, connections to the
- backend servers are taken down when the corresponding frontend
- connection is taken down.
-
- * mod_proxy: Ability to run SSL over proxy gateway connections,
- encrypting (or reencrypting) at the proxy.
-
- * mod_proxy: Add capability of mod_proxy to load balance across
- a farm of backend servers.
-
- * mod_cache: Handle ESI tags.
-
-EXPERIMENTAL MODULES:
-
- Experimental modules should eventually be be promoted to fully supported
- status or removed from the repository entirely (ie, the
- 'experiment' failed). This section tracks what needs to happen to
- get the modules promoted to fully supported status.
-
- mod_cache/mod_mem_cache/mod_disk_cache:
-
- * mod_mem_cache: Consider adding a RevalidateTimeout directive to
- specify time at which local cached content is to be revalidated
- (ie, underlying file stat'ed to see if it has changed).
-
- * mod_cache: CacheEnable/CacheDisable should accept regular expressions.
- jerenkrantz says: Too slow. Get regexs away from speedy caches by
- default. Introduce a new CacheEnableRegex if you want.
-
- * mod_cache: Fix dependency on ATOMIC operators. Need
- APR_HAS_ATOMIC_* feature macros.
- jerenkrantz says: APR 1.0+ has some guaranteed form of atomics.
-
- * mod_mem_cache/mod_disk_cache: Need to be able to query cache
- status (num of entries, cache object properties, etc.).
- mod_status could be extended to query optional hooks defined
- by modules for the purpose of reporting module status.
- mod_cache (et. al.) could define optional hooks that are called
- to collect status. Status should be queryable by
- HTTP or SNMP?
- jerenkrantz says: Yawn. Who cares.
-
-PRs that have been suspended forever waiting for someone to
-put them into 'the next release':
-
- * documentation and Q&A
-
- PR#2221: Make online documentation search link back to my installation
- Status:
-
- PR#2906: Propose that Apache recommend $UNIQUE_ID for all "session id"
- algorithms
- Status:
-
- PR#2793: When will Apache support P3P? Any Plans?
- Status:
-
- * build
-
- PR#2113: HTTP Server Rebuild Line Needs Changing for the better
- Status:
-
- PR#2421: problem specifying ndbm library for build ?with autoconfigure
- Status:
-
- * config
-
- PR#76: missing call to "setlocale();"
- Status:
-
- PR#628: Request of "Options SymLinksIfGroupMatch"
- Status:
-
- PR#793: RLimitCPU and RLimitMEM don't apply to all children like they should
- Status:
-
- PR#922: it is useful to allow specifiction that root-owned symlinks
- should always be followed
- Status: