Apache 2.0 offers numerous enhancements and performance improvements. 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.
The following list summarizes some of the most essential enhancements introduced with Apache 2.0:
- * Support for multithreading was implemented through multiple-processing modules (MPMs), giving Apache a performance boost.
- * The build system has been rewritten from scratch to be based on autoconf and libtool. This made Apache's configuration system more similar to that of other packages.
- * Support for non-UNIX platforms has been improved, and Apache is now faster and more stable on platforms such as BeOS, OS/2 and Windows. With the introduction of platform-specific MPMs and the Apache Portable Runtime, these platforms are now implemented in their native API, avoiding POSIX-emulation layers.
- * Support for Apache Portable Runtime (APR) was introduced and caused major code reorganization. APR is an abstraction layer that masks the call differences of various systems, allowing Apache to be easily ported to more systems with varying APIs.
- * The modules' APIs have changed significantly for 2.0, introducing several enhancements to provide more flexibility in handling callback routines and data structures. Also, new calls have been added to provide additional module capabilities without patching the core Apache server.
- * Apache 2.0 also supports the new internet protocol, IPv6. On systems where IPv6 is supported by the underlying Apache Portable Runtime library, Apache gets IPv6 listening sockets by default. Moreover, the Listen, NameVirtualHost and <VirtualHost> directives support IPv6 numeric address strings (e.g., Listen [fe80::1]:80).
- * Apache 2.0 now supports the WebDAV (web-based distributed authoring and versioning) collaboration standard from W3C. WebDAV is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol that allows users to edit and manage files collaboratively on remote web servers.
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