[squid-users] Squid-2, Squid-3, roadmap

Hello Squid folk,

I maintain Yahoo!'s internal build of Squid, and serve as a resource
for the various Y! properties that use it.

We currently only use Squid-2, and don't have plans to migrate to
Squid-3; although ESI, ICAP as well as eCAP look interesting, there
are too many critical features (e.g., collapsed fowarding, refresh
stale hit, full Vary/ETag support, not to mention several things in
2.7DEVEL0) missing for us to use it. Additionally, anecdotal evidence
shows that it's still too unstable and slow for production use where
these aspects are important; or at least, there is enough doubt about
them to make switching too risky for too little benefit.

I know that there's a lot of water under the bridge WRT -2 vs -3, and
don't want to stir up what must seem like a very old discussion to the
developers. However, there's not much clarity about the situation WRT
2 vs 3, and we've been in this state for a long period of time.

Specifically, a few questions for the developers of Squid:

   * Besides the availability of *CAP and ESI -- which are very
specialised, and of interest only to a subset of Squid users -- is
there any user-visible benefit to switching to -3?

   * What do the developers consider to be a success metric for -3?
I.e., when will maintenance on -2 stop?

   * Until that time, what is the development philosophy for Squid-2?
Will it be only maintained, or will new features be added / rewrites
be done as (possibly sponsored) resources are available? Looking at <http://wiki.squid-cache.org/RoadMap/Squid2
>, it seems to be the latter; is that the correct interpretation?

   * If that success metric is not reached, what is the contingency
plan?

   * How will these answers change if a substantial number of users
willingfully choose to stay on -2 (and not just because they neglect
to update their software)?

Also, a few questions for -users:

   * Who is using -3 in production now? How are you using it (load,
use case, etc.) and what are your experiences?

   * Who is planning to use -3 soon? Why?

   * Who is not planning to use -3 soon? Why not?

Thanks,

--
Mark Nottingham       mnot@yahoo-inc.com