Older blog entries for gstein (starting at number 68)

Lessee... since last month. Not a whole lot going on because of a ton of travel. Went to Monterey to speak at the O'Reilly conference, went to Hawaii for vacation and a wedding, then to Tahoe for a b-day party, off to Sonoma for a wedding, then finally to Seattle for biz with XMLFund. Oy... so distracting.

In between all of that, I got my WebDAV/Subversion integration design completed (and checked into Subversion's CVS). It's coding time now.

Finally got some filtering stuff into Apache (we had a big pow-wow a few weeks ago; Ryan checked in the design output of that meeting). There are some small issues with it, but the stuff is moving forward quite fine now.

I banged out a ViewCVS release, but it didn't have any of the new features that I wanted (too rushed); no edna release either :-( ... sigh.

Completed the DAV integration, including APR-ization and the config/build stuff. The big spot was ripping out the old crap of a dynamic-load plugin system. It was a hellish design that really didn't turn out in a way I liked. Luckily, it is much easier to simply use true Apache modules as the plugins. With the hook system in Apache 2.0, it made this total cake. So there is now a core DAV module plus a default "filesystem" module which provides a filesystem-based backend for the DAV functionality. This structure now allows new backends. There are several out there, but all proprietary :-( ... Brendan Quinn started one for MySQL. I'm going to code one to use Subversion for a back-end.

I've also been doing quite a bit of Subversion work. Mostly email jockeying (about the design), but also digging into some issues with its use of APR.

Been trying to clear my dev plate of some stuff so that I can turn back to some Python coding. My new httplib and imputil modules are in Python now, but there is some remaining work items plus doc'ing that I need to do. I gotta get the DAV and SVN to a state where I can ignore it for a week and turn to the Python stuff. Then I want to get an edna and ViewCVS releases out the door. Then back to Apache 2.0 and Subversion. Whew!

I'm speaking at the O'Reilly Conference this-coming week. You may also be able to find me hanging around the ActiveState booth (I work as a Technical Advisor for them), and especially at the ActiveState parties :-)

My talk for ApacheCon Europe was accepted, and my session will be a comfy two hours this time. I had an hour and a half at the last ApacheCon and that always feels too short. It also looks like I'll be talking at XML DevCon in November about the WebDAV stuff.

Been working on integrating mod_dav into Apache 2.0. Also been doing some filtered I/O for Apache, along with some other nits.

Had a good trip to Napa for several days. Came back with buttloads of wine. Oy. What a dangerous place.

Pool is coming along... just waiting for the tile guy now.

This and that. I'll write some more techy stuff in a while...

Woo! Woo!

Finally release mod_dav 1.0. We had a full-on press release that went out over the BusinessWire.

Damn, I'm excited! I've been working on this for a bit over a year and a half. To see it reach the point where I feel good about calling it 1.0... Yes! I tell you, there is nothing like going into a header file to change the VERSION from "0.9.17" up to "1.0.0" ... hehe. A definite rush.

From here? mod_dav goes into Apache 2.0. While the independent module will receive maintenance, all the "big work" will occur within Apache itself.

No coding for a few days, though. Today is answering email :-), and getting ready for a couple days up in Seattle to visit XMLFund again.

Went to vist my friend Tommy Burnette at ILM today. Also, finally met Ping in person, which was cool. The three of us went to Skywalker Ranch for lunch. It was excellent, and the house and grounds were awesome. They've got this kick ass research library there with a ton of interesting books. It would be cool to just spend an entire day there browsing in detail... all kinds of history, culture, and literature books.

Been working on some background stuff for mod_dav, getting ready for a release next week.

Also getting ready for integrating mod_dav into Apache 2.0. Been thinking about what pieces will go where, what kinds of basic support frameworks to do, etc. There are quite a few pieces of mod_dav that will fold into Apache's framework. The actual "module" will shrink quite dramatically. It will probably remain a module, but it also needs to act similar to the "core" module -- it will effectively be the default/fallback handler for many methods.

Been working on a httplib replacment for Python. It works great, but I'm trying to refine it a bit -- it needs to enforce some kind of policy on shoving requests into the pipeline (and fetching responses). A client can't just shove ten requests in at once because the third response might close the connection. Oops! What to do with those seven? And no... queueing them on the client side isn't the right answer for what is supposed to be a simple, flexible low-level library :-)

Just made a snapshot of mod_dav for final testing. Ah... feels good. If you're interested, it is located here.

Watched Sleepy Hollow tonite. Good movie! There was a great balance of standard Tim Burton-esque scenery, "whodunnit?" questions, great Headless Horseman effects, and a bit o' humor thrown in.

Interior painting is finally just about done. All that is left is the dining room and some stenciling. It looks great. If you're in the Bay Area and want a reference for custom interior painting, then drop me an email. The painter (Olivia) does great work.

Next week, the pool guys come back to put all the steel and rebar into the pit. Inspection, then the "gunite" goes in. Couple weeks to get to that point. It is cruising right along. Of course, we don't have our tile picked yet :-(

Hmm... with mod_dav at a stable point, now what to do? I think I'll go get some ViewCVS stuff done. I still have those pipe errors, that I was seeing on FreeBSD, to track down.

Spending a lot of time on the new-httpd mailing list (Apache development list). The I/O layering/filtering topic has resurfaced again. Boy, what a time sink :-) ... I'm near the opinion that spending an hour to code a patch is probably faster than continual discussion... hehe

Been conversing with the WebDAV Working Group about some fine points of 424 responses and locknull resources. It looks like I can make some great simplifying assumptions and my whole worry about 207/424 responses is right out the window. Sweet. Some basic code to implement the new/simple stuff and ship mod_dav 1.0. Hot damn.

Cleared out the Content-Range stuff. Now trying to solve the 424/207 issues for MOVE, COPY, and DELETE. It is a puzzler -- returning a 207 is probably incorrect since any resources not mentioned in the multistatus were (implicitly) moved, copied, or deleted. Since we totally punt on any locking problem, we'd be telling the client the wrong thing. I think the correct response is probably a 424 "at the top" rather than a 207. The body could contain some details. I'll ask on the list.

Watched Arlington Road on DVD last night. It moved pretty slow and Jeff Bridges' character was somewhat unbelievable in parts. The end had a cool twist.

Been working on mod_dav. Added some fine-tuning of resource validation (e.g. lock checking), fixed some error responses, add Content-Range support to GET requests, etc. Gotta add Content-Range to PUT and handle some 424/207 issues. Then it's done.

Sergei, my long time friend (known him over 25 years) was in town this weekend. Lots of fun. His father, Jerry, is an awesome bronze sculpturist. Even cooler, we got our Glory of the Seas for the pool (two other views here and here). Of course, the pool has a few months to go, so Glory stays inside the house. But damn... what an excellent bronze. We have two other pieces of Jerry's work, too (Firebird and Where the Sea Caresses the Shore).

Watched Shanghai Noon (Jackie Chan's latest film) with Sergei. Very funny movie, and it kept a great pace. We also watched a The Man with the Golden Gun (a Bond movie), as I just recently acquired all of the Bond DVDs (13 in all). Not a whole lot else going on...

[original post on 29 May 2000. fixed recently-broken links on 30 May.]

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