Someone recently created a User Guide issue #3087185: Remove Hiawatha from User guide ?

In it, they are asking if we should still support the Hiawatha web server, which is listed on
https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/system-requirements/web-server

The reason the question came up is that the maintainer of Hiawatha is apparently not continuing development:
https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/weblog/132

It also hasn't had a new major version since 2015:
https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/about

And its Support page says it has no active support:
https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/support

So... Probably we should not recommend it on the System Requirements page?

Comments

jhodgdon created an issue. See original summary.

jhodgdon’s picture

jhodgdon
she/her
Primary language English
commented
Issue summary: View changes

fix typo (thanks chx) -- web server not web browser

cilefen’s picture

cilefen commented

It's touted in Drupal's docs for its security, yet it is not maintained. Plus, it is not popular. +1 remove from the page.

Version: 8.8.x-dev » 8.9.x-dev

Drupal 8.8.0-alpha1 will be released the week of October 14th, 2019, which means new developments and disruptive changes should now be targeted against the 8.9.x-dev branch. (Any changes to 8.9.x will also be committed to 9.0.x in preparation for Drupal 9’s release, but some changes like significant feature additions will be deferred to 9.1.x.). For more information see the Drupal 8 and 9 minor version schedule and the Allowed changes during the Drupal 8 and 9 release cycles.

jhodgdon’s picture

jhodgdon
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Primary language English
commented
Title: Should we still support Hiawatha? » Do not continue to support/promote Hiawatha server on Requirements page
Status: Active » Needs review

OK, updating title and setting to Needs Review.

init90’s picture

init90
Location Ukraine
commented

+1 to remove. I don't see any reasons to spend efforts to document dead products.

ghost of drupal past’s picture

ghost of drupal past
he/him
commented
Status: Needs review » Reviewed & tested by the community

Yes, it's dead.

Also, there's hardly anything else but the big three. If we look at the "Web server developers: Market share of computers" on https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2019/08/15/august-2019-web-server-sur... then the statistics are very clear: Apache, nginx and Microsoft together covers a staggering 85%. Also, Litespeed from our standpoint is an Apache drop in replacement which then adds a few more percentage points and then there will be more than a few webservers which are not capable of running PHP at all.

cilefen’s picture

cilefen commented

I am in favor of a brief change record.

jhodgdon’s picture

jhodgdon
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Primary language English
commented

Created a change record.
https://www.drupal.org/node/3087592

I also verified that in core/INSTALL.txt we were already not mentioning Hiawatha. So to mark this fixed, all we need to do is edit
https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/system-requirements/web-server

We have a release manager's approval here (cilifen). Do we need to wait for more approvals, such as Product Manager? Or should we just do it?

cilefen’s picture

cilefen commented
Issue tags: +Needs product manager review

Thank you for the change record. I think it is appropriate for a product manager to review.

gábor hojtsy’s picture

gábor hojtsy
he/him
Primary language Hungarian
Location Hungary
commented
Issue tags: -Needs product manager review

As a core product manager I agree that its fine to remove support for a webserver that in itself is unsupported.

catch’s picture

catch
he/him
Primary language English
commented

I've updated the requirements page and will publish the change record.

catch’s picture

catch
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Primary language English
commented
Version: 8.9.x-dev » 8.8.x-dev
Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Fixed

All done. Marking fixed.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.