Mike -- EMAIL IGNORED wrote:
On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:57:45 -0700, Aaron Turner wrote: [...]I believe Eric was agreeing with Tom's sentiment. Ie: If you think this is worthwhile, please feel free to submit a patch adding this feature.Since I have not looked at Apache source code, for me this would be at least several hours work, if not several days. For someone into the source code, I expect it to take a few minutes, to an hour or two, depending on structure. I would hope that such a person might submit a patch.
Some elements maybe to enlighten you, from someone who is, like you, a grateful (?) user of Apache httpd, and not a contributor of code.
As you probably know, Apache httpd is an open source project, and also free software. Basically it means that it is being written by people who are not being paid for the time they spend writing it. Considering that Apache httpd is being used succesfully on literally hundreds of thousands of websites worldwide, one would also have to admit that these people are competent and know what they are doing. It also means that you get the result, a piece of software that manages hundreds of thousands of websites worlwide and has cost thousands of man-hours of work, entirely for free.
Apache httpd is being improved somewhat over time by people who submit suggestions, but mainly by people who follow-up these suggestions by contributing what is known as a "patch" (a code modification) implementing their suggestion. Such a suggestion, when accompanied by a patch, tends to be taken more seriously by the Apache httpd code contributors, than a mere (relatively gratuitious) suggestion on a user's mailing list. It is taken more seriously, because it shows that the person who made the suggestion, at least looked at the code, understood it to some extent, made some change, tested it, and found it to have some benefit and no obvious nefarious consequences. If you are really a programmer, you will understand the world of difference between this, and merely making a suggestion on a mailing list, based on one particular situation, unverified and uncorroborated by anyone else.
The way I personally understand your last paragraph above however, it seems to imply that based on the inherent worth of your insight, you somehow expect everyone to be in awe, and someone else to do the rest of the work for you. That is not how open source projects work, and certainly not Apache httpd, where any apparently harmless change could ruin the day of 10,000 website administrators.
I am not saying that your suggestion is without merit. But although I am a mere Apache user, knowing how central DNS is to the entire fabric and function of the WWW, I would myself expect quite a bit more "backup" to such a suggestion, before I even spent some time trying to figure out what benefits it could bring, and what other consequences it might have. Wow, if this option was set in the Apache main configuration, should it automatically be inherited by all Virtual Hosts ? does it mean that SSL would not work anymore ? what about "Allow from mycompany.com" ? what if some embedded mod_perl or mod_php application tries to do a DNS lookup via an Apache library call ?
Does the above provide some insight as to the tongue-in-cheek answers you have been getting so far ?
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