[wheaties]

Whenever I see a long list of features like these, especially something major like Lua integration, I always wonder, what was given up in the process of adding them? Normally when there's a performance bump, they show the numbers. In this case there's no numbers. Was there a performance hit? Negligible?

[Thaxll]

If you don't use it there is not reason to get a performance bump. Nginx is also using Lua to extend features.

Since Nginx started to add more and more features to their loadbalance it makes sense for HAProxy to get a scripting engine.

[jimktrains2]

I'm surprised to see lua, and to see 1.6 released so quickly. 1.5 took forever to finalize and SSL termination was heavily debated because it wasn't a fast or lightweight like the original goal of HAProxy was. While I realize I don't have to use the lua scripts, it just feels out of place.

EDIT: I guess part of my concern with Lua was the example on the linked article. It seems to be able to interface with most of the system and not just as a content source, which makes more sense.

[lobster_johnson]

Willy might not agree, and this isn't really a criticism, but I think 1.5 simply got out of hand — he did a lot of (much-needed) architectural cleanup that took a long time to complete, but along the way a lot of new features (and subsequent bug fixes) got piled onto the same branch and intermingled with the cleanup work.

It's one of those "take apart your airplane and put it back together again" projects that one generally shouldn't do, though sometimes there is no way around it. If you need to rearrange the whole internal architecture of your engine, you should it do it quickly and not mix it with new work.