On Mar 30, 2005, at 2:40 PM, William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
At 01:02 PM 3/30/2005, Curt Arnold wrote:
If apr-iconv is an implementation detail of apr_xlate, then I don't see the significance of deprecating it. Either it (or a replacement) is needed to support apr_xlate on platforms that don't provide an iconv or apr_xlate needs to be deprecated or removed.
We drop it. Point users 'elsewhere'. "Not Maintained Here" sign on the door. Tarball moves to archive.apache.org. Perhaps same for svn repository.
Obviously we want apr_xlate to point at -something- but the what would no longer be apr_iconv.
I assume that Subversion is actually using apr_xlate or they would not have bothered with setting APR_ICONV_PATH. Does httpd use apr_xlate?
If so, I don't see how you could deprecate apr_xlate or make it only available on Unix platforms.
Well, subversion does use apr_xlate. But this was actually reported by our log4cxx devs, who tripped over the subversion copy when they thought they were using their own build.
I made the initial report when attempting to use apr_xlate in log4cxx.
What I saw trying to say was that Subversion would likely have not set APR_ICONV_PATH in Windows unless they were using apr_xlate. So removing apr_xlate on Windows would likely break Subversion on Windows. It may also break or reduce the functionality of httpd on Windows, but that is speculation. I would not see dropping apr_xlate on platforms that don't have a native iconv implementation as acceptable.
I could see several potential interpretations of "deprecating apr-iconv" and the proposal needs to be clarified for a vote to be meaningful. Here some of the potential interpretations:
1. Drop apr_iconv and suppress apr_xlate on platforms without a native iconv implementation.
2. Drop apr_iconv and support apr_xlate on platforms without a native iconv implementation using something else.
3. Drop apr_iconv and suppress apr_xlate on platforms without a native iconv implementation, but add another translation method that can be supported by the Windows API and iconv.
I don't think interpretation 1 could be supported since Subversion and likely httpd depend on apr_xlate and want to run on Windows platforms. Interpretation 2 would depend on the nature of the "something else". I assume the minimum requirements would be support on Windows and an Apache compatible license. I would assume that there would be resistance to interpretation 3.
I could support option 2, but would need to know the identity and licensing terms of the "something else" first.
