[darcs-users] HTTP stuff (was: planning darcs 2.0.3)

[Gwern Branwen]

On 2008.09.08 02:12:46 +0400, Dmitry Kurochkin <dmitry.kurochkin at gmail.com> scribbled 1.3K characters:
> Hello.
>
> I see to important HTTP related issues: 996 and 1035. Did I forget anything?
>
> I did not have a chance to look at Eric's logs for 996 yet. But 1035
> is a curl bug. I reported it upstream but got no response yet.
> Obviously it will not be fixed until next release. And it makes
> pipelining with proxy (at least some of them) hang.
>
> I am not sure what should be done in darcs with this. I see several options:
>
> 1) leave pipelining enabled by default, raising minimal curl version
> check for pipelining in configure to (unreleased) 7.19.1
> 2) leave configure check as is, disable pipelining by default, add
> --enable-pipelining flag
> 3) leave everything as is, add a note in readme (or elsewhere) that
> with proxy --disable-pipelining flag may be required
> 4) implement a runtime check for proxy configuration and disable pipelining
>
> It does not look like proxy is a common configuration, so 3) may be a
> good choice. Otherwise 1) looks like the best solution, but it means
> that most users will not be using pipelining for several months at
> least. Or we can do a combination of 1) and 2) - add
> --enable-pipelining flag, disable pipelining by default for < 7.19.1,
> enable pipelining by default for >= 7.19.1.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Regards,
>   Dmitry

I support 1 or 4.

2 or 3 bother me. 2 adds complexity but may still let the error happen, and 3 is just terrible. This looks like a subtle bug, the worst kind. It only takes 1 such bug to *completely* cheese off a user and guarantee they will never want to use Darcs again.

--
gwern
USS Enforcers SORO Morwenstow MOD Albright MI5 AOL 701 GCHQ
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