> Am 20.01.2017 um 21:37 schrieb Graham Leggett <minf...@sharp.fm>: > > On 20 Jan 2017, at 7:47 PM, David Zuelke <d...@heroku.com> wrote: > >> I'd actually like to question the whole practice of porting features back to >> older branches. I think that's the core reason why trunk is in total >> disarray, and why no substantial releases have been made. There is just no >> reason for anyone to push forward the state of 2.6 or even 3.0 if you can >> just backport whatever you want. > > The reason this is bad is because Apache httpd comes with a module ecosystem > - when you move from httpd v2.0 to v2.2 to v2.4 to v2.6, or rules are that > the ABI can break, and therefore all modules that depend on that version must > be recompiled. This includes modules that are closed source and offered by a > proprietary vendor, or are open source but provided in binary form by a > distro. > > Right now, you can get new features on the httpd v2.4 branch, but ONLY if > that feature does not break existing behaviour in any way. This is entirely > reasonable, convenient, and what we’ve been doing since the 1990s.
Agree to the plan. I can see only one exception to this and that is the experimental HTTP/2 support. The introduction of slave connections is NOT ENTIRELY backward compatible. I try to make this as compatible as possible, but there are limits. >> [...] >> I have said this in the other thread that hasn't gotten much traction ("A >> new release process?"). The PHP team was in the exact same spot as HTTPD a >> few years ago. No substantial progress, stale branches, no light at the end >> of the tunnel, and a lot of fighting. > > We’ve had a significant amount of progress, a trunk that is so stable that > almost all fixes and features can be backported to v2.4 without any fear of > incompatibility, and the “fighting” is limited to very few individuals. > > We’re not broken, we don’t need fixing. Agreed. > > Regards, > Graham > — > Stefan Eissing <green/>bytes GmbH Hafenstrasse 16 48155 Münster www.greenbytes.de