[ANN] net-http-persistent 1.9 and 2.0 Released

net-http-persistent versions 1.9 and 2.0 has been released!

* http://docs.seattlerb.org/net-http-persistent
* https://github.com/drbrain/net-http-persistent

Manages persistent connections using Net::HTTP plus a speed fix for Ruby 1.8.
It's thread-safe too!

Using persistent HTTP connections can dramatically increase the speed of HTTP.
Creating a new HTTP connection for every request involves an extra TCP
round-trip and causes TCP congestion avoidance negotiation to start over.

Net::HTTP supports persistent connections with some API methods but does not
handle reconnection gracefully. net-http-persistent supports reconnection
and retry according to RFC 2616.

Changes:

=== 2.0 / 2011-08-26

* Incompatibility
  * Net::HTTP::Persistent#verify_mode now defaults to
    OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER. This may cause HTTPS request failures if your
    default certificate store lacks the correct certificates.

=== 1.9 / 2011-08-26

* Minor Enhancement
  * Added Net::HTTP::Persistent#cert_store to set an SSL certificate store
    which defaults to the OpenSSL default certificate store.

    HTTPS server certificates will be validated when this option is combined
    with setting Net::HTTP::Persistent#verify_mode to
    OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER.