The Apache Group Saturday capped three years of development and one year of beta with its release of the first generally available version of Apache 2.0.

Apache 2.0 has been running on the Apache.org Web site since December of 2000. It had been in Beta since early April 2001.

This latest version of Apache works on many versions of Unix, BeOS, OS/2, Windows, and NetWare. The Apache Group believes that because of the improvements made to Apache 2.0, the initial release of the server will perform equally well on all supported platforms.

The HTTPD Project signed off on the 2.0.35 release and recommends this latest version of the server be used on production Web sites. The HTTPD Project considers 2.0.35 its best release and recommends it be used in preference to all older versions (including the 1.3 series).

Apache 2.0 offers a variety of enhancements, improvements, and performance boosts over the 1.3 codebase. The most key addition is the capability to run Apache in a hybrid thread/process mode on any platform that supports both threads and processes.

Apache 2.0 also offers support for filtered I/O, which enables modules to modify the output of other modules before it is sent to the client.

The server also features support for IPv6 on any platform that supports IPv6.

Additional new features include native Windows NT unicode support, multilanguage error responses, and a new application programming interface.

New, downloadable snapshots of the Apache httpd source code are available every six hours from http://cvs.apache.org/snapshots/; the server is available for download from http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/.

Amy Newman is managing editor of sister site ServerWatch.