> 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

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