Today the Varnish Project released version 2.0.4 of their proxy cache. According to the web site, the changes from 2.0.3 are:

• Serve graced objects if the backend is unhealthy.
• Portability fixes for Solaris, MacOS X/Darwin and NetBSD
• Documentation updates
• Added server.hostname and server.identity to VCL.
• Fixed a problem where we would sleep for far too long when we would run out of file descriptors.
• Add support for processing binary objects with ESI.

I’m especially interested in the second bullet for all releases I got from subversion after r3927 won’t compile on Solaris for me.

Edit: Yes, it compiles just fine. However, I still encounter some strange problems under Solaris 10. I already wrote a dirty patch to “fix” them but right now I’m too tired to post it. I’m going to submit it once I get up again.

This is yet another site born in my search for a place where I can drop my thoughts, ideas and other stuff. This time it’s all about caching. In particular this means caching of content normally delivered by a web server to a requesting party. Now, why caching? Isn’t that a technology we should have thrown out of the windows by now? Servers are so much more powerful than they were in the beginning of the web era. Internet connection even for home users is ten to hundred times faster than when it all started. Do we really still need caching?

Yes, we do.

There are many reasons for that – and I’m going to dive into all of them by time – but the most important one also is the most convincing: it’s about money.

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