Http cancel race with stop sending

[siyengar]

In the section on stop sending we say

Servers MUST NOT abort a response in progress as a result of receiving a solicited RST_STREAM.

However a client may have sent a RST before the server sent stop sending. In addition the client may have also sent a http request canceled error code which indicates that it is not interested the response.

It seems like the MUST seems harsh here and it could be a SHOULD with exceptions

[martinthomson]

If a client wants the server to stop sending the response, it can use STOP_SENDING. But SHOULD NOT is probably OK here. The server can stop sending if it wants to.

[siyengar]

Ya it could use stop sending but it’s possible that the client just doesn’t care anymore and sends a cancel which races with the servers stop sending

[MikeBishop]

If the client wants to abort the request without finishing it, that would definitely be a RST_STREAM. If the client doesn't care about the response to a request it already sent, that would be STOP_SENDING. I suppose it can be SHOULD, or perhaps clarified to say "a RST_STREAM with the STOPPING error code".

However, in a real implementation, I don't think the server will even notice any RST_STREAM regardless of error code -- the STOP_SENDING from the server was triggered in the first place because the server closed its read stream, and it won't see the RST_STREAM unless it tries to read from that stream further, which would probably be considered invalid anyway. So unless and until something happens to the server's write stream -- which would be a STOP_SENDING from the client -- it will continue merrily sending its response regardless of what the client does to the request.

[MikeBishop]

OBE; #1643 addresses this.