Category Archives: cURL and libcurl

curl and/or libcurl related

cURL and libcurl

curl feature freeze on August 10

In order to get the next curl release done, we’re entering feature freeze on Sunday August 10 (at 00:00 UTC to make it specific).

Starting then, we add no new features for the upcoming two weeks but we only fix bugs. At the end of the two week period, or possibly before that if all looks well, we release 7.19.0.

The work on CURLOPT_POSTREDIR and the “Limiting IP addresses” work can of course continue but if we don’t have working patches for them very quickly, they’ll have to wait for next release.

cURL and libcurl, Development, Linux, Network

HTTP implementations

I previously mentioned on the libcurl mailing list, that Mark Nottingham in the IETF HTTP Working Group has initiated the work on putting together an overview of all (interesting) existing HTTP implementations

Of course curl is included in the bunch, or rather libcurl, but I would also urge you all to step forward and provide further details on other implementations you worked on or know of!

Blogging, cURL and libcurl, Rockbox

Vacation days are slow days

I just wanted to drop a note saying that the biggest explanation for the silence and slowness of my blog the last couple of weeks have been my ongoing vacation, which is still going on for another two weeks.

Of course things are happening still, but due to my lack of computer time right now I tend to prioritize actually working with those things rather than posting here writing about the stuff I do/read/fix.

The Rockbox Steering Board vote is over, results will be published soon (spoiler: I’m voted in as one of the members). There’s a curl release coming up for August and we still have a few outstanding issues to fix. More on these topics later!

cURL and libcurl

Bad Reviews Never Die

I like user feedback and comments from people in projects I participate in – even those that I run or maintain myself. I value bug reports and I think no project can evolve without a fair amount of external input.

But they can also be annoying since when done in public places they tend to stick around. If they’re negative I can respond to them if posted in forums where that is possible and where I care about it, but sometimes they’re just “blurted” out in a way that I cannot respond to and that I cannot do anything about. And the review/comment/complaint will sit there to be watched by the world. Uncommented by me or anyone else thinking otherwise.

Let me point out the recent example that made me write this particular rant: user review on curl at ohloh.

I realize there’s nobody to blame and that this is the way of life and how things work and that everybody is entitled to publish their opinions and all that. It still doesn’t feel really good when you just don’t agree with them and they’re “against” one of your own babies.

cURL and libcurl, Network, Open Source, Security

public suffixes list

I noticed the new site publicsuffix.org that has been setup by the mozilla organization in an attempt to list public suffixes for all TLDs in the world, to basically know how to prevent sites from setting cookies that would span over just about all sites under that “public suffix”.

While I can see what drives this effort and since we have the same underlying problem in curl as well, I have sympathy for the effort. Still, I dread “having to” import and support this entire list in curl only to be able to better work like the browsers in the cookie department. Also, it feels like a cat and mouse race where the list may never be complete anyway. It is doomed to lack entries, or in the worst case list “public suffixes” that aren’t any such public suffixes anymore and thus it’ll prevent sites using that suffix to properly use cookies…

There’s no word on the site if IE or Opera etc are going to join this effort.

Update: there are several people expressing doubts about the virtues of this idea. Like Patrik Fältström on DNSOP.

cURL and libcurl

curl 7.18.2 and lunch

Just minutes ago I uploaded the curl and libcurl 7.18.2 package to the curl site. There are a few new changes that people might just like, but most importantly there are many bug fixes.

And by a happy coincidence, a bunch of #curl visitors (the irc channel on freenode) are going to meet up for lunch on tuesday next week (June 10th) in Stockholm, Sweden. If you’re a curl hacker or curl fan and in the proximity that day, feel free to get in touch and join us!

cURL and libcurl

curl needs a fresh take on command line options

1 Comment

I just posted about this on the curl-users mailing list and I’ll just echo it here to reach a slightly larger audience:

One of the not so good behaviors of curl is how many of the command line options work when being repeated: toggling on/off.

We’ve got bug reports about this in the past and I know for a fact that this behavior has burnt more than one guy who’s tried to set default options for curl in their .curlrc etc. When they then re-use the same option on the command line or in a script, it effectively disables the option again…

I’d like this corrected. I want people to be able to explicitly enable and disable features with the command line options. I think the toggling is very rarely useful and something we can just abandon – unless we can figure out a way to keep it for backwards compatibility when we introduce the new behavior.

I’m willing to sacrifice some backwards compatibility to get this done, but I would of course like to hurt as few users as possible.

I’m very interested to get ideas and feedback from you guys on how we can accomplish this!

My first thoughts on how to do this, is simply to convert all the current options to enable options and then introduce a new concept that negates the option. Like -v or –verbose to enable verbose, and –no-verbose to disable verbose.

Any bright ideas?

Update: my suggestion above is what has now been committed targeted for the upcoming 7.19.0 release…

cURL and libcurl, Electronics

curl by sony

I got the latest Linux Journal issue (#170, June 2008) the other day and while reading through it I fell over the article about a guy who found a GPL license agreement among the papers for his brand new Sony TV.

… and there he also mentioned that they use curl! Fun! Apparently in their “Bravia Internet Video Link” product. Whatever that is… “Stream, browse and watch internet video and much more on your compatible BRAVIA® HDTV with the BRAVIA® Internet Video Link. It’s like extra channels for your new HDTV.”

cURL and libcurl, Open Source

libev vs libevent

Only a few years ago (autumn 2005) I was awarded a grant by iis.se (“The Internet Infrastructure Foundation” in Sweden) and in my subsequent work on the code for that project, I used libevent and implemented a high performance API for libcurl when dealing with very many simultaneous transfers.

Recently when I’ve read about people using the curl_multi_socket() API, I’ve seen mentions of the libev library and today when I’ve finally read up on the subject I fell over their very interesting performance comparison document comparing libev with libevent, including charts and all. Perhaps not a surprise when coming from one of the main the libev authors, but it seems libev does perform from some to significantly better than libevent depending on the circumstances.

When I get some time over I think I’ll try to port some of the example source codes over to use libev and see how it plays for me.

Update: I like how libev.com is used by Long Island Beverage Systems Inc… 🙂