Subject: Re: Bug#666854: mod-ruby: sourceful transition towards Apache 2.4

From: Colin Watson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 10:39:21 +0100

clone 666854 -1
reassign -1 ftp.debian.org
retitle -1 RM: mod-ruby -- unmaintained upstream and in Debian, requires substantial upstream porting to Apache 2.4, at least partially superseded by ruby-passenger
thanks

On Sun, Apr 01, 2012 at 09:15:52PM +0000, [email-masked] wrote:
> your package mod-ruby is provding an Apache2 web server module.
> We're upgrading Apache to the new upstream version 2.4 [1] (tracked
> as transition bug #661958). This requires all modules to be rebuilt
> due to ABI changes.

I spent some time looking at this, and got as far as in the patch I've
attached here for the record.  The next thing to look at according to
the resulting build failure would be changes to request.c.

However, this being a language binding, it requires significant new
outbound API as well as inbound API.  I am getting increasingly
uncomfortable with trying to construct what would amount to a
Debian-specific API-changing fork of mod_ruby.

I think that mod-ruby should be removed from Debian, for the following
reasons:

 * The upstream project appears dead.  modruby.net now has nothing to do
   with mod_ruby and (insofar as I can understand the Japanese with the
   aid of machine translation) appears to be something to do with pawn
   shops.  https://github.com/shugo/mod_ruby has had some changes since
   1.2.6, mostly for Ruby 1.9 support, but nothing to do with Apache 2.4
   and the last commit was almost two years ago.

 * The changes necessary for Apache 2.4 are sufficiently complex that
   they really ought to be made by somebody with upstream
   responsibility.

 * The Debian package is apparently all but orphaned; see both this bug
   and #676349.  It's been just under five years since the last upload.

 * ruby-passenger (binary package: libapache2-mod-passenger) is probably
   a suitable replacement for many modern uses of Ruby, although I don't
   know Ruby anywhere near well enough to say whether it would suit
   everyone.

Thanks,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [[email-masked]]