Once a *http.Server is closed, it should not be reusable via *http.Server.Serve. If Serve is called on a closed *http.Server, it should return ErrServerClosed.

My reasoning behind this proposed change is that presently, there is subtle unexpected behaviour in what I think are pretty standard Go http servers. They have the following structure.

func main() {
	s := // define the http server
	go func() {
		err := s.ListenAndServe()
		// handle err
	}()
	sigs := // define and register sigs to receive os signals
	<-sigs
	s.Close() // or s.Shutdown()
}

The problem with the above structure is the program may receive a os signal before the server has begun serving. It will call Close() or Shutdown() on the server. Then, the program could exit which means everything worked out fine but another possibility is that now the server begins serving. This is hypothetical and unlikely but if it does happen, the Server may receive a request and begin processing. This would be unexpected behaviour imo.

If the program originally called Close(), it would be unexpected for a new request to be accepted after the server is closed. If the program called Shutdown(), then the program may exit with a request in flight which would not be a graceful shutdown.

Now, I do not think we can change this behaviour because it is possible existing programs rely on it, perhaps Go 2?