There is zero mention in varnish documentation of how ESI and forced cache invalidation occur. ( because it simply doesn't support it ) That was and is my point, and is not addressed on that page or anywhere else.

I realize that would require more extensive changes to support; my only point is that I wanted to use ESI specifically in relation to forced invalidation.

I reported the bug quite clearly, and the main dev said I was wrong and to this day refuses to acknowledge that forced invalidation does not work sensibly in regard to ESI.

I would like to point out again, that this is water under the bridge. I still support Varnish and respect the developer. I simply wish we could all get along and acknowledge limitations of what we do, rather than denying valid points made about software.

That is the true source of the anger in open source; developers refuse to acknowledge that people use their software in ways they didn't expect, and that you have to listen carefully to appreciate what people want. As a developer, it is unreasonable to brush off and ignore people who are trying to help.

Well, if you didn't like their denying your improvement, you could always make a fork, that's the beauty of the open source.

It is usually advised to people who manage open source projects to stay focused on their vision, and not accept random improvements that do not help towards their self-imposed goal.

ESI is not a very well designed protocol, and cache invalidation is hard. You could look at Ledge[1] which has an aim of supporting the cache use cases for ESI fragements.

[1] https://github.com/pintsized/ledge