In this issue

Release: 1.1.1
Beta: 1.2b1 (released 1st December 1996)

Six months after the release of 1.1.1, a beta version of the upcoming 1.2 version has been released. This public beta is the first opportunity for most existing Apache users to try out the new features coming in 1.2. This is a beta version, so bugs are to be expected. If this release follows the plan of previous major upgrades to Apache, there will be a few more betas before the final version is released. Since this is the first beta of 1.2, it is officially called "Apache 1.2 Beta 1", abbreviated to "1.2b1".

In this special issue of Apache Week, released early to coincide with the release of Apache 1.2 Beta, we look at what's new. For Apache administrators we list all the new features, modules and directives, and all the directives which have change syntax or meaning. For module programmers we also have a comprehensive guide to what is different in the module API.

Apache 1.2 Beta is largely compatible with Apache 1.1.1, so existing configurations should work without changes. However this is a beta release, so live sites should initially install and try out Apache 1.2 beta without disturbing the live server. The first thing to do is download Apache from the Apache site, extracted and compiled as normal (precompiled versions of Apache are not usually made available for beta releases). Compiling Apache is easier than in previous releases: you should just be able to change into the src directory and run

  ./Configure
  make

This will automatically identify your operating system and compiler, and build Apache with the default set of modules. You can of course edit the Configuration file as normal, and customise the modules to be compiled in. Note that there are several new optional modules included with the distribution, and a couple of extra default modules. This are listed later.

After compiling it, you can run Apache 1.2 beta. You need to first configure the files in the conf directory for your site. If you already have a running server, you might want to test it with the same configuration by copying your existing conf files into the Apache 1.2 conf directory. If you do this remember to update the ServerRoot directory.

A few of new things you can try out before running the server itself: httpd -v tells you the Apache version number, httpd -l lists all the modules compiled into Apache, and httpd -h lists all the directives available to you (this is similar to the output produced by the optional 'info' module).

If you have written a module for Apache 1.1.1, or use a third-party module, you might find it does not compile immediately with Apache 1.2. This is due to a number of changes, the most important being a new way to read any request body (e.g. PUT or POST data). To help with updating modules, we have a comprehensive guide to what has changed with in module API.