Customizing HttpClient 4.x with Axis 1.7

With earlier versions of Axis that used Commons-Httpclient, much
configuration was possible through setting options, but I notice on
perusing the source, that many of the options we used to use are not
available for use with HttpClient 4.x, I'm sure in part because HC does a
lot of things differently.

Is the way to handle client customizations now to:

1. Extend HTTPSenderImpl and implement a getHttpClient which calls super()
and then performs client customizations
2. Extend HTTPClient4TransportSender to provide the custom HTTPSenderImpl
in createHTTPSender()

Specifically I need to:

* Disable chunked coding (formerly HTTPConstants.CHUNKED)
* Disable retries (formerly via HTTPConstants.HTTP_METHOD_PARAMS)
* Configure a custom SSL context to possibly allow self-signed SSL
certificates (using our own TrustVerifier)  (formerly via
HTTPConstants.CUSTOM_PROTOCOL_HANDLER)
* Use a custom Authenticator to support both NTLM and Basic
* Possibly configure a proxy server

We used to achieve all of these settings via setting options using
HTTPConstants, but it looks like support only exists now for the
Authenticator and Proxy server settings, unless things have moved or gotten
implemented in a different way.

I'm not averse to extending HttpSenderImpl and HTTPClient4TransportSender,
but if there's a bitter / more elegant way, I'd rather use it.

Any advice?

   Nick