Apache 2.0alpha8 Released
-------------------------

The Apache Group is pleased to announce the release of the seventh public
alpha release of Apache 2.0.  

Apache 2.0 offers numerous enhancements, improvements and performance
boosts over the 1.3 codebase. The most visible and noteworthy addition
is the ability to run Apache in a hybrid thread/process mode on any
platform that supports both threads and processes.  This has shown to
improve the scalability of the Apache HTTPD server significantly in
our early testing, on some versions of Unix.  With this version of Apache,
we have also added support for filtered I/O.  This allows modules to modify
the output of other modules before it is sent to the client.  This release also
greatly improves the performance and robustness of Apache on the
Microsoft Windows Operating Systems.  Lastly we are proud to announce
support for BeOS in this version of the server.

Included in this alpha is a pre-alpha version of mod_proxy.  Mod_proxy
is not at the same level as the rest of the server, and should be enabled
only by people who are very interested in working with the code.

Apache 2.0a8 under UNIX has undergone some testing, but there are some
known issues in the current release (hey, it is an "alpha" for a
reason!). It is intended for developers and experienced Apache HTTPD
administrators to play around with and work on. It is not a production
release. If you do not feel comfortable compiling and working with
code, the Apache Group strongly recommends that you wait for a more
stable beta release before you try this version.

Apache 2.0a8 under Windows has undergone some testing as well.  There
are known issues in the current release with regards to Apache on windows
95 and 98.  We are working through those problems, and hope to have them
fixed for future releases of the 2.0 alpha.

There are new snapshots of the Apache httpd source available every 6
hours from http://dev.apache.org/from-cvs/apache-2.0/ - please
download and test if you feel brave. We don't guarantee anything
except that it will take up disk space, but if you have the time and
skills, please give it a spin on your platforms.

Apache has been the most popular web server on the Internet since
April of 1996. The May 2000 WWW server site survey by Netcraft (see:
http://www.netcraft.co.uk/Survey/) found that more web servers were
using Apache than any other software running on more than 60% of the
Internet web servers.

For more information, please check out http://www.apache.org/httpd.html

Changes with Apache 2.0a8
  *) Add a directive to mod_mime so that filters can be associated with
     a given mime-type.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Get multi-views working again.  We were setting the path_info
     field incorrectly if we couldn't find the specified file.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Fix 304 processing.  The core should never try to send the headers
     down the filter stack.  Always, just setup the table in the request
     record, and let the header filter convert it to data that is ready
     for the network.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) More fixes for the proxy.  There are still bugs in the proxy code,
     but this has now proxied www.yahoo.com and www.ntrnet.net (my ISP)
     successfully.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Fix params for apr_getaddrinfo() call in connect proxy handler.
     [Chuck Murcko]

  *) APR: Add new apr_getopt_long function to handle long options.
     [B. W. Fitzpatrick ]

  *) APR: Change apr_connect() to take apr_sockaddr_t instead of hostname.
     Add generic apr_create_socket().  Add apr_getaddrinfo() for doing
     hostname resolution/address string parsing and building
     apr_sockaddr_t.  Add apr_get_sockaddr() for getting the address
     of one of the apr_sockaddr_t structures for a socket.  Change
     apr_bind() to take apr_sockaddr_t.  [David Reid and Jeff Trawick]

  *) Remove the BUFF from the HTTP proxy.  This is still a bit ugly, but
     I have proxied pages with it, cleanup will commence soon.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Make the proxy work with filters.  This isn't perfect, because we
     aren't dealing with the headers properly.  [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Do not send a content-length iff the C-L is 0 and this is a head
     request.  [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Make cgi-bin work as a regular directory when using mod_vhost_alias
     with no VirtualScriptAlias directives. PR#6829 [Tony Finch]

  *) Remove BUFF from the PROXY connect handling. [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Get the default_handler to stop trying to deal with HEAD requests.
     The idea is to let the content-length filter compute the C-L before
     we try to send the data.  If we can get the C-L correctly, then we
     should send it in the HEAD response.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) The Header filter can now determine if a body should be sent based
     on r->header_only.  The general idea of this is that if we delay
     deciding to send the body, then we might be able to compute the
     content-length correctly, which will help caching proxies to cache
     our data better.  Any handler that doesn't want to try to compute
     the content-length can just send an EOS bucket without data and
     everything will just work.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Add the referer to the error log if one is available.
     [Markus Gyger ]

  *) Mod_info.c has now been ported to Apache 2.0.  As a part of this
     change, the root of the configuration tree has been exposed to modules
     as ap_conftree.
     [Ryan Morgan ]

  *) Get the core_output_filter to use the bucket interface directly.
     This keeps us from calling the content-length filter multiple times
     for a simple static request.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) We are sending the content-type correctly now.
     [Ryan Bloom and Will Rowe]

  *) APR on FreeBSD: Fix a bug in apr_sendfile() which caused us to report
     a bogus bytes-sent value when the only thing being sent was trailers
     and writev() returned an error (or EAGAIN).  [Jeff Trawick]

  *) Get SINGLE_LISTEN_UNSERIALIZED_ACCEPT working again.  This uses the
     hints file to determine which platforms define
     SINGLE_LISTEN_UNSERIALIZED_ACCEPT.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) APR: add apr_get_home_directory()  [Jeff Trawick]

  *) Initial import of 1.3-current mod_proxy. [Chuck Murcko]

  *) Not all platforms have INADDR_NONE defined by default.  Apache
     used to make this check and define INADDR_NONE if appropriate,
     but APR needs the check too, and I suspect other applications will
     as well.  APR now defines APR_INADDR_NONE, which is always a valid
     value on all platforms.
     [Branko Èibej ]

  *) Destroy the pthread mutex in lock_intra_cleanup() for PR#6824.
     [Shuichi Kitaguchi ]

  *) Relax the syntax checking of Host: headers in order to support
     iDNS. PR#6635 [Tony Finch]

  *) When reading from file buckets we convert to an MMAP if it makes
     sense.  This also simplifies the default handler because the
     default handler no longer needs to try to create MMAPs.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) BUFF has been removed from the main server.  The BUFF code will remain
     in the code until it has been purged from the proxy module as well.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Byteranges have been completely re-written to be a filter.  This
     has been tested, and I believe it is working correctly, but it could
     doesn't work for the Adobe Acrobat plug-in.  The output almost matches
     the output from 1.3, the only difference being that 1.3 includes
     a content-length in the response, and this does not.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) APR read/write functions and bucket read functions now operate
     on unsigned integers, instead of signed ones.  It doesn't make
     any sense to use signed ints, because we return the error codes,
     so if we have an error we should report 0 bytes read or written.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Always compute the content length, whether it is sent or not.
     The reason for this, is that it allows us to correctly report
     the bytes_sent when logging the request.  This also simplifies
     content-length filter a bit, and fixes the actual byte-reporing
     code in mod_log_config.c
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Remove AP_END_OF_BRIGADE definition.  This does not signify what
     it says, because it was only used by EOS and FLUSH buckets.  Since
     neither of those are required at the end of a brigade, this was
     really signifying FLUSH_THE_DATA, but that can be determined better
     by checking AP_BUCKET_IS_EOS() or AP_BUCKET_IS_FLUSH.  EOS and FLUSH
     buckets now return a length of 0, which is actually the amount of data
     read, so they make more sense.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Allow the core_output_filter to save some data past the end of a
     request.  If we get an EOS bucket, we only send the data if it
     makes sense to send it.  This allows us to pipeline request
     responses.  As a part of this, we also need to allocate mmap
     buckets out of the connection pool, not the request pool.  This
     allows the mmap to outlive the request.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Make blocking and non-blocking bucket reads work correctly for
     sockets and pipes.  These are the only bucket types that should
     have non-blocking reads, because the other bucket types should
     ALWAYS be able to return something immediately.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) In the Apache/Win32 console window, accept Ctrl+C to stop the
     server, but use Ctrl+Break to initiate a graceful restart
     instead of duplicating behavior. [John Sterling]

  *) Patch mod_autoindex to set the Last-Modified header based on
     the directory's mtime, and add the ETag header.  [William Rowe]

  *) Merge the 1.3 patch to add support for logging query string in
     such a way that "%m %U%q %H" is the same as "%r".
     [Bill Stoddard]

  *) Port three log methods from mod_log_config 1.3 to 2.0:
     CLF compliant '-' byte count, method and protocol.
     [Bill Stoddard]

  *) Add a new LogFormat directive, %c, that will log connection
     status at the end of the response as follows:
     'X' - connection aborted before the response completed.
     '+' - connection may be kept-alive by the server.
     '-' - connection will be closed by the server.
     [Bill Stoddard]

  *) Expand APR for WinNT to fully accept and return utf-8 encoded
     Unicode file names and paths for Win32, and tag the Content-Type
     from mod_autoindex to reflect that charset if the the feature
     macro APR_HAS_UNICODE_FS is true.  [William Rowe]

  *) Compute the content length (and add appropriate header field) for
     the response when no content length is available and we can't use
     chunked encoding.  [Jeff Trawick]

  *) Changed ap_discard_request_body() to use REQUEST_CHUNKED_DECHUNK,
     so that content input filters get dechunked data when using
     the default handler. Also removed REQUEST_CHUNKED_PASS.
     [Sascha Schumann]

  *) Add mod_ext_filter as an experimental module.  This module allows
     the administrator to use external programs as filters.  Currently,
     only filtering of output is supported.  [Jeff Trawick]

  *) Most Apache functions work on EBCDIC machines again, as protocol
     data is now translated (again).  [Jeff Trawick]

  *) Introduce ap_xlate_proto_{to|from}_ascii() to clean up some of
     the EBCDIC support.  They are noops on ASCII machines, so this
     type of translation doesn't have to be surrounded by #ifdef
     CHARSET_EBCDIC.  [Jeff Trawick]

  *) Fix mod_include.  tag commands work again, and the server will
     send the FAQ again.  This also allows mod_include to set aside
     buckets that include partial buckets.
     [Ryan Bloom and David Reid]

  *) Add suexec support back.  [Manoj Kasichainula]

  *) Lingering close now uses the socket directly instead of using
     BUFF.  This has been tested, but since all we can tell is that it
     doesn't fail, this needs to be really hacked on.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Allow filters to modify headers and have those headers be sent to
     the client.  The idea is that we have an http_header filter that
     actually sends the headers to the network.  This removes the need
     for the BUFF to send headers.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Charset translation: mod_charset_lite handles translation of
     request bodies.  Get rid of the xlate version of ap_md5_digest()
     since we don't compute digests of filtered (e.g., translated)
     response bodies this way anymore.  (Note that we don't do it at
     all at the present; somebody needs to write a filter to do so.)
     [Jeff Trawick]

  *) Input filters and ap_get_brigade() now have a input mode parameter
     (blocking, non-blocking, peek) instead of a length parameter.
     [hackathon]

  *) Update the mime.types file to the registered media types as
     of 2000-10-19. PR#6613 [Carsten Klapp ,
     Tony Finch]

  *) Namespace protect some macros declared in ap_config.h
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Support HTTP header line folding with input filtering.
     [Greg Ames]

  *) Mod_include works again.  This should still be re-written, but at
     least now we can serve an SHTML page again.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Begin to remove BUFF from the core.  Currently, we keep a pointer
     to both the BUFF and the socket in the conn_rec.  Functions that
     want to use the BUFF can, functions that want to use the socket,
     can.  They point to the same place.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) apr_psprintf doesn't understand %lld as a format.  Make it %ld.
     [Tomas "Ögren" ]

  *) APR pipes on Unix and Win32 are now cleaned up automatically when the
     associated pool goes away.  (APR pipes on OS/2 were already had this
     logic.)  This resolvs a fatal file descriptor leak with CGIs.
     [Jeff Trawick]

  *) The final line of the config file was not being read if there was
     no \n at the end of it.  This was caused by apr_fgets returning
     APR_EOF even though we had read valid data.  This is solved by
     making cfg_getline check the buff that was returned from apr_fgets.
     If apr_fgets return APR_EOF, but there was data in the buf, then we
     return the buf, otherwise we return NULL.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Piped logs work again in the 2.0 series.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Restore functionality broken by the mod_rewrite security fix:
     rewrite map lookup keys and default values are now expanded
     so that the lookup can depend on the requested URI etc.
     PR #6671 [Tony Finch]

  *) Tighten up the syntax checking of Host: headers to fix a
     security bug in some mass virtual hosting configurations
     that can allow a remote attacker to retrieve some files
     on the system that should be inaccessible. [Tony Finch]

  *) Add a pool bucket type.  This bucket is used for data allocated out
     of a pool.  If the pool is cleaned before the bucket is destroyed, then
     the data is converted to a heap bucket, allowing it to survive the
     death of the pool.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Add a flush bucket.  This allows modules to signal that the filters
     should all flush whatever data they currently have.  There is no way
     to actually force them to do this, so if a filter ignores this bucket,
     that's life, but at least we can try with this.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Add an output filter for sub-requests.  This filter just strips the
     EOS bucket so that we don't confuse the main request's core output
     filter by sending multiple EOS buckets.  This change also makes sub
     requests start to send EOS buckets when they are finished.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Make ap_bucket_(read|destroy|split|setaside) into macros.  Also
     makes ap_bucket_destroy a return void, which is okay because it
     used to always return APR_SUCCESS, and nobody ever checked its
     return value anyway.
     [Cliff Woolley ]

  *) Remove the index into the bucket-type table from the buckets
     structure.  This has now been replaced with a pointer to the
     bucket_type.  Also add some macros to test the bucket-type.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Renamed all MODULE_EXPORT symbols to AP_MODULE_DECLARE and all symbols
     for CORE_EXPORT to AP_CORE_DECLARE (namespace protecting the wrapper)
     and retitled API_EXPORT as AP_DECLARE and APR_EXPORT as APR_DECLARE.
     All _VAR_ flavors changes to _DATA to be absolutely clear.
     [William Rowe]

  *) Add support for /, //, //servername and //server/sharename
     parsing of  blocks under Win32 and OS2.
     [Tim Costello, William Rowe, Brian Harvard]

  *) Remove the function pointers from the ap_bucket type.  They have been
     replaced with a global table.  Modules are allowed to register bucket
     types and use then use those buckets.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) mod_cgid: In the handler, shut down the Unix socket (only for write)
     once we finish writing the request body to the cgi child process;
     otherwise, the client doesn't hit EOF on stdin.  Small request bodies
     worked without this change (for reasons I don't understand), but large
     ones didn't.  [Jeff Trawick]

  *) Remove file bucket specific information from the ap_bucket type.
     This has been moved to a file_bucket specific type that hangs off
     the data pointer in the ap_bucket type.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Input filtering now has a third argument.  This is the amount of data
     to read from lower filters.  This argument can be -1, 0, or a positive
     number.  -1 means give me all the data you have, I'll deal with it and
     let you know if I need more.  0 means give me one line and one line
     only.  A positive number means I want no more than this much data.

     Currently, only 0 and a positive number are implemented.  This allows
     us to remove the remaining field from the conn_rec structure, which
     has also been done.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Big cleanup of the input filtering.  The goal is that http_filter
     understands two conditions, headers and body.  It knows where it is
     based on c->remaining.  If c->remaining is 0, then we are in headers,
     and http_filter returns a line at a time.  If it is not 0, then we are
     in body, and http_filter returns raw data, but only up to c->remaining
     bytes.  It can return less, but never more.
     [Greg Ames, Ryan Bloom, Jeff Trawick]

  *) mod_cgi: Write all of the request body to the child, not just what
     the kernel would accept on the first write.  [Jeff Trawick]

  *) Back out the change that moved the brigade from the core_output_filters
     ctx to the conn_rec.  Since all requests over a given connection
     go through the same core_output_filter, the ctx pointer has the
     correct lifetime.
     [Ryan Bloom]

  *) Fix another bug in the send_the_file() read/write loop. A partial
     send by apr_send would cause unsent data in the read buffer to
     get clobbered. Complete making send_the_file handle partial
     writes to the network.
     [Bill Stoddard]

  *) Fix a couple of type fixes to allow compilation on AIX again
     [Victor J. Orlikowski ]

  *) Fix bug in send_the_file() which causes offset to be ignored
     if there are no headers to send.
     [Bill Stoddard]

  *) Handle APR_ENOTIMPL returned from apr_sendfile in the core
     filter. Useful for supporting Windows 9* with a binary
     compiled on Windows NT.
     [Bill Stoddard]

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