Serf / libsvn_ra_serf doesn't work with Squid-fronted Apache

[Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis]

Serf / libsvn_ra_serf doesn't work with Squid-fronted Apache:

$ svn ls http://overlaystest.gentoo.org/svn/proj/python
svn: XML parsing failed: (411 Length Required)
$

This problem was originally reported in:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=241234

Robin Johnson <rob...@gentoo.org> wrote in that bug report:
> Doing a tcpdump on during the co request, and comparing the requests, the Neon
> version sends PROPFIND with Content-Length, while serf sends PROPFIND without
> Content-Length, which thus upsets squid.

--
Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis

[Lieven Govaerts]

The cause of this problem is that serf uses chunked encoding, a HTTP/1.1
feature that Squid doesn't support:
http://wiki.squid-cache.org/Features/HTTP11?highlight=%28chunked%29

While adding HTTP/1.0 fallback in serf has been discussed, no one is
working on it.

There are two workarounds:
- use ra_neon instead of ra_serf.
- switch from squid to a HTTP/1.1 proxy, like apache+mod_proxy.

I've updated serf issue 28 at
http://code.google.com/p/serf/issues/detail?id=28 to keep track of this
issue.

Lieven