By Scott Clark, InternetNews.com
The Apache Software
Foundation last week at the ApacheCon 2000 conference in
Orlando, Fla., unveiled the alpha release of Apache 2.0.
In a move that was probably designed to fan the fires of the
Open Source community, Apache made the announcement by posting the
news on the Slashdot.org web site, which was projected on a
viewscreen in front of the closing ceremony audience.
This pre-release version of Apache 2.0a provides several
improvements over the previous (1.3) release, including:
- Unix Threading – for Unix systems with POSIX threads support,
Apache will be able to operate in a hybrid multiprocess,
multithreaded mode; this should improve scalability - New Build System – the build system has been rewritten from
scratch to be based on autoconf and libtool; this makes
configuration system for Apache more similar to that of other
packages, and thus, easier to use - Multiprotocol Support – this release of Apache has some
infrastructure in place which will support the serving of multiple
protocols; mod_echo has been written as just such an example - Better support for non-Unix platforms – this release should be
faster and more stable on non-Unix platforms such as BeOS, OS/2,
and Windows; with the introduction of platform-specific
multiprocessing modules and the Apache Portable Runtime, these
platforms will be able to avoid using POSIX-emulation functions
that can tend to be buggy and hurt the web server’s
performance - New API – the API for modules has been significantly changed
for this release; many of the module-ordering problems from 1.3
should be gone; much of this is accomplished automatically, and
module ordering is done per-hook to enable additional flexibility;
new calls have been added that should enable modules to do more
without requiring patching of the core Apache server
For additional information, or to download the Alpha release, visit
the Apache Server
Project Web site.