A large amount of discussion took place this week after a
tarball for Apache 1.3.18 was produced for testing. Earlier
in the week, Dean Gaudet had committed a patch to unescape
the hostname part of a URL (allowing URLs such as
www.%61rctic.org to work correctly). It emerged during
testing that this change was triggering compiler warnings on
many platforms. While the group was not sure whether this
would cause any real problems, it was eventually decided to
abandon 1.3.18, fix the problem, and release 1.3.19 instead.
No new release date has been proposed, although the fix is
now committed to CVS.
Several messages came in this week concerning the fact that
SGI has decided to drop support for their Accelerating
Apache project. This project comprises of a set of
patches written by Mike Abbott aiming to increase the
performance of Apache 1.3 by up to ten times, and of Apache
2.0 by up to four times . These patches were contributed back
to Apache, but never made it into the Apache source tree. In
a message to the group, Jim Jagielski summed up the view from
the Apache side of the argument, explaining that this came
down to a "failure of communications". On a more positive
note, Bill Stoddard then announced that he planned to commit
one of the patches.
A large number of commits came this week from Roy Fielding as
he cleaned up the build system for APR. It was otherwise a
relatively quiet week on the CVS commit front.
Poised to be the largest gathering of Apache users to date,
ApacheCon 2001 is being held in Santa Clara, USA in April.
Registration at the
ApacheCon site is now open and if you register for the
conference in the next couple of weeks you can save up to
US$200 off the entry fee.
We have four copies of the handy "mod_perl Pocket Reference"
to give away to lucky readers.
Read our full review of the book which we featured last
week.
For a chance to get your hands on a copy of this book, answer
this simple question:
Who originally created the Perl scripting language:
A) Al Gore, B) Larry Wall, C) Richard Stallman
Send your answer (A, B, or C) to japh@apacheweek.com to
reach us no later than 1st March 2001. Your e-mail address
will not be used for anything other than to let you know if
you won. Four winners will be drawn using the Perl
rand function from all correct entries
submitted, one entry per person, no cash alternative,
editors' decision is final, so there.
In this section we highlight some of the articles on the web
that are of interest to Apache users.
Last November (Apache Week issue
224), we mentioned that APR (Apache Portable Run-time)
has spinned off into a separate project. In
"Aid From APR", Ryan Bloom explains about its advantages
and illustrates his point by comparing a APR segment of code
with the native code.
In CNet Builder.com, it's Ryan Bloom again as he talks about
how Apache 2.0 is more than a web server as it has the
potential to serve
any protocol. He reveals the benefits of using a single
server for multiple protocols and the way to implement it
using Apache 2.0.
Sys Admin magazine presents Apache::Motd, an
Apache module based on the "Message Of The Day" utility found
on UNIX systems. It intercepts user's initial request and
displays the contents of the motd file before serving the
requested page. Carlos Ramirez, its creator walks us through
the
installation and configuration process.
What better way to show you are using Apache than to attach
an unofficial metal cast of the Apache feather to the outside
of your server box? You can now buy one
online and it comes with a detachable BSD Daemon.