Re: Deprecation of browser XSLT - SVNIndexXSLT

Branko Čibej <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.version-control.subversion.devel
Organization The Apache Software Foundation
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On 22. 7. 2026 16:10, Daniel Sahlberg wrote:
> Den mån 20 juli 2026 kl 00:40 skrev Thomas Åkesson <[email protected]>:
>
>
>>     On 19 Jul 2026, at 22:51, Daniel Sahlberg
>>     <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>     Den tis 14 juli 2026 kl 14:52 skrev C. Michael Pilato
>>     <[email protected]>:
>>
>>         On Tue, Jul 14, 2026 at 5:14 AM Thomas Åkesson
>>         <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>             Hi,
>>
>>             I was unable to find any discussion on this deprecation
>>             of XSLT in the browsers.
>>
>>             https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/deprecating-xslt
>>
>>             I suspect this deprecation will break the Subversion web
>>             ui (folder listing and Collection of Repositories) and
>>             the customization point for these UIs (SVNIndexXSLT).
>>
>>             We use this XSLT extensively so I am interested if anyone
>>             has experimented with server-side transformation?
>>
>>
>>     httpd supports output filters
>>     (https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/en/developer/output-filters.html)
>>     and the documentation mentions XSLT transformations as one use
>>     case. I would probably investigate this a bit.
>
>     Where did you find XSLT mentioned?
>
>
> Oh, there were several pages I looked at and I only linked one. 
> Sorry... Last part of this section: 
> https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/en/filter.html#intro
>
>
>>     mod_transform (https://github.com/OutOfOrder/mod_transform)
>>     claims to do this but the code was last updated 15 years ago so I
>>     have no idea how much bitrot it has accumulated (I didn't try it).
>
>     I have looked at that module but it seems unmaintained and I want
>     to avoid using modules that don't ship with a typical httpd build.
>
>     I was successful with mod_ext_filter, see separate mail in the
>     thread. Likely works as a stop gap but I need to evaluate the
>     performance.
>
> I assume, without any tests at all, that a module that is executed 
> within the httpd process will be significantly more performant than 
> spawning an external process.
>
> Have you thought about asking on the httpd lists?
>
>>
>>         It does cause me to wonder though...  Would a SVNIndexCSS
>>         feature be interesting -- where we generate that HTML with
>>         quite a bit more structure (divs, ids, etc.) and allow folks
>>         to point to a CSS file that at least pretties it up?
>>
>>
>>     Interesting idea. If we also provide a way of injecting some
>>     custom HTML first (or last) in the response, it should be
>>     possible to use javascript to manipulate the DOM enough to
>>     transform the basic directory listing into whatever form desired
>>     by the server admin. I would suggest we do as little as possible
>>     on our side (an id on the outer <ul> and some classes on the <li>s).
>
>     Yes, something along those lines, preferably including the ability
>     to use htmx instead of direct DOM manipulation from Javascript
>     (supporting either inclination).
>
>
> Which means, as I understand it, depending on another javascript 
> framework which we don't know if it exists or how much it has changed 
> in 5 years. I would prefer if we leave that outside of the scope for 
> Subversion (for reasons, see Brane's e-mail else-thread).
>
>
>     The following would provide flexibility:
>      - class/id on list, class on list items preserving whether item
>     is dir/file/repository
>      - snippet added in <head> (in order to include scripts, css, etc)
>      - snippet before list.
>      - snippet after list
>      - wrap list in div (would allow a flex layout without JS DOM
>     manipulation, easy to insert a sibling to the list using HTMX)
>
>     With "snippet" I mean a static piece of html defined in a file (or
>     possibly Apache conf if deemed practical). Possibly some very
>     simple variable substitutions, handling title, revision, svn-version.
>
>
> We are sort of re-implementing mod_include if we go this route. Don't 
> know if we can re-use something from there do do this? I'm inclined to 
> do a minimum viable solution at first to avoid implementing a 
> full-blown CMS in C...

I would rather rip out that XSLT support we have now and instead try to 
integrate with mod_include so that users can install that on top of 
mod_dav_svn to get nicer directory listings.

-- Brane
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