Package: release-notes
Severity: normal

(Apache maintainers X-Debbugs-CC)

Hi,

Many changes in the way to handle configuration (e.g., configuration
files name must now end with .conf, semantic of access control, etc.)
may deserve to be documented in the Release Notes, or at least a pointer
to the upstream documentation. #721071 might be of interest.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/upgrading.html

Regards

David

Multiviews

MultiViews is a per-directory option, meaning it can be set with an Options directive within a <Directory>, <Location> or <Files> section in httpd.conf, or (if AllowOverride is properly set) in .htaccess files. Note that Options All does not set MultiViews; you have to ask for it by name.

The effect of MultiViews is as follows: if the server receives a request for /some/dir/foo, if /some/dir has MultiViews enabled, and /some/dir/foo does not exist, then the server reads the directory looking for files named foo.*, and effectively fakes up a type map which names all those files, assigning them the same media types and content-encodings it would have if the client had asked for one of them by name. It then chooses the best match to the client's requirements.

MultiViews may also apply to searches for the file named by the DirectoryIndex directive, if the server is trying to index a directory. If the configuration files specify

DirectoryIndex index

then the server will arbitrate between index.html and index.html3 if both are present. If neither are present, and index.cgi is there, the server will run it.

If one of the files found when reading the directory does not have an extension recognized by mod_mime to designate its Charset, Content-Type, Language, or Encoding, then the result depends on the setting of the MultiViewsMatch directive. This directive determines whether handlers, filters, and other extension types can participate in MultiViews negotiation.