Things to do in project cURL. Please tell us what you think, contribute and
send us patches that improve things!
- Be aware that these are things that we could do, or have once been considered
- things we could do. If you want to work on any of these areas, please
- consider bringing it up for discussions first on the mailing list so that we
- all agree it is still a good idea for the project!
-
All bugs documented in the KNOWN_BUGS document are subject for fixing!
1. libcurl
1.7 Detect when called from within callbacks
1.8 Allow SSL (HTTPS) to proxy
1.9 Cache negative name resolves
- 1.10 Support IDNA2008
- 1.11 minimize dependencies with dynamicly loaded modules
2. libcurl - multi interface
2.1 More non-blocking
5.3 Rearrange request header order
5.4 SPDY
5.5 auth= in URLs
- 5.6 Refuse "downgrade" redirects
6. TELNET
6.1 ditch stdin
10. LDAP
10.1 SASL based authentication mechanisms
- 11. SMB
- 11.1 File listing support
- 11.2 Honor file timestamps
- 11.3 Use NTLMv2
-
- 12. New protocols
- 12.1 RSYNC
-
- 13. SSL
- 13.1 Disable specific versions
- 13.2 Provide mutex locking API
- 13.3 Evaluate SSL patches
- 13.4 Cache OpenSSL contexts
- 13.5 Export session ids
- 13.6 Provide callback for cert verification
- 13.7 improve configure --with-ssl
- 13.8 Support DANE
-
- 14. GnuTLS
- 14.1 SSL engine stuff
- 14.2 check connection
-
- 15. WinSSL/SChannel
- 15.1 Add support for client certificate authentication
- 15.2 Add support for custom server certificate validation
- 15.3 Add support for the --ciphers option
-
- 16. SASL
- 16.1 Other authentication mechanisms
- 16.2 Add QOP support to GSSAPI authentication
+ 11. New protocols
+ 11.1 RSYNC
+
+ 12. SSL
+ 12.1 Disable specific versions
+ 12.2 Provide mutex locking API
+ 12.3 Evaluate SSL patches
+ 12.4 Cache OpenSSL contexts
+ 12.5 Export session ids
+ 12.6 Provide callback for cert verification
+ 12.7 improve configure --with-ssl
+ 12.8 Support DANE
+
+ 13. GnuTLS
+ 13.1 SSL engine stuff
+ 13.2 check connection
+
+ 14. SASL
+ 14.1 Other authentication mechanisms
+ 14.2 Add QOP support to GSSAPI authentication
- 17. Client
- 17.1 sync
- 17.2 glob posts
- 17.3 prevent file overwriting
- 17.4 simultaneous parallel transfers
- 17.5 provide formpost headers
- 17.6 warning when setting an option
- 17.7 warning when sending binary output to terminal
- 17.8 offer color-coded HTTP header output
- 17.9 Choose the name of file in braces for complex URLs
- 17.10 improve how curl works in a windows console window
-
- 18. Build
- 18.1 roffit
-
- 19. Test suite
- 19.1 SSL tunnel
- 19.2 nicer lacking perl message
- 19.3 more protocols supported
- 19.4 more platforms supported
- 19.5 Add support for concurrent connections
-
- 20. Next SONAME bump
- 20.1 http-style HEAD output for FTP
- 20.2 combine error codes
- 20.3 extend CURLOPT_SOCKOPTFUNCTION prototype
-
- 21. Next major release
- 21.1 cleanup return codes
- 21.2 remove obsolete defines
- 21.3 size_t
- 21.4 remove several functions
- 21.5 remove CURLOPT_FAILONERROR
- 21.6 remove CURLOPT_DNS_USE_GLOBAL_CACHE
- 21.7 remove progress meter from libcurl
- 21.8 remove 'curl_httppost' from public
- 21.9 have form functions use CURL handle argument
- 21.10 Add CURLOPT_MAIL_CLIENT option
+ 15. Client
+ 15.1 sync
+ 15.2 glob posts
+ 15.3 prevent file overwriting
+ 15.4 simultaneous parallel transfers
+ 15.5 provide formpost headers
+ 15.6 warning when setting an option
+
+ 16. Build
+ 16.1 roffit
+
+ 17. Test suite
+ 17.1 SSL tunnel
+ 17.2 nicer lacking perl message
+ 17.3 more protocols supported
+ 17.4 more platforms supported
+ 17.5 Add support for concurrent connections
+
+ 18. Next SONAME bump
+ 18.1 http-style HEAD output for FTP
+ 18.2 combine error codes
+ 18.3 extend CURLOPT_SOCKOPTFUNCTION prototype
+
+ 19. Next major release
+ 19.1 cleanup return codes
+ 19.2 remove obsolete defines
+ 19.3 size_t
+ 19.4 remove several functions
+ 19.5 remove CURLOPT_FAILONERROR
+ 19.6 remove CURLOPT_DNS_USE_GLOBAL_CACHE
+ 19.7 remove progress meter from libcurl
+ 19.8 remove 'curl_httppost' from public
+ 19.9 have form functions use CURL handle argument
+ 19.10 Add CURLOPT_MAIL_CLIENT option
==============================================================================
To prevent local users from snooping on your traffic to the proxy. Supported
by Chrome already:
- https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/secure-web-proxy
+ http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/secure-web-proxy
...and by Firefox soon:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=378637
A name resolve that has failed is likely to fail when made again within a
short period of time. Currently we only cache positive responses.
-1.10 Support IDNA2008
-
- International Domain Names are supported in libcurl since years back, powered
- by libidn. libidn implements IDNA2003 which has been superseded by IDNA2008.
- libidn2 is an existing library offering support for IDNA2008.
-
-1.11 minimize dependencies with dynamicly loaded modules
-
- We can create a system with loadable modules/plug-ins, where these modules
- would be the ones that link to 3rd party libs. That would allow us to avoid
- having to load ALL dependencies since only the necessary ones for this
- app/invoke/used protocols would be necessary to load. See
- https://github.com/bagder/curl/issues/349
2. libcurl - multi interface
HOST is a command for a client to tell which host name to use, to offer FTP
servers named-based virtual hosting:
- https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7151
+ http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7151
4.2 Alter passive/active on failure and retry
Additionally this should be implemented for proxy base URLs as well.
-5.6 Refuse "downgrade" redirects
-
- See https://github.com/bagder/curl/issues/226
-
- Consider a way to tell curl to refuse to "downgrade" protocol with a redirect
- and/or possibly a bit that refuses redirect to change protocol completely.
-
-
6. TELNET
6.1 ditch stdin
be possible to use ldap_bind_s() instead specifying the security context
information ourselves.
-11. SMB
-
-11.1 File listing support
+11. New protocols
-Add support for listing the contents of a SMB share. The output should probably
-be the same as/similar to FTP.
-
-11.2 Honor file timestamps
-
-The timestamp of the transferred file should reflect that of the original file.
-
-11.3 Use NTLMv2
-
-Currently the SMB authentication uses NTLMv1.
-
-12. New protocols
-
-12.1 RSYNC
+11.1 RSYNC
There's no RFC for the protocol or an URI/URL format. An implementation
should most probably use an existing rsync library, such as librsync.
-13. SSL
+12. SSL
-13.1 Disable specific versions
+12.1 Disable specific versions
Provide an option that allows for disabling specific SSL versions, such as
SSLv2 http://curl.haxx.se/bug/feature.cgi?id=1767276
-13.2 Provide mutex locking API
+12.2 Provide mutex locking API
Provide a libcurl API for setting mutex callbacks in the underlying SSL
library, so that the same application code can use mutex-locking
independently of OpenSSL or GnutTLS being used.
-13.3 Evaluate SSL patches
+12.3 Evaluate SSL patches
Evaluate/apply Gertjan van Wingerde's SSL patches:
http://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2004-03/0087.html
-13.4 Cache OpenSSL contexts
+12.4 Cache OpenSSL contexts
"Look at SSL cafile - quick traces look to me like these are done on every
request as well, when they should only be necessary once per SSL context (or
style connections are re-used. It will make us use slightly more memory but
it will libcurl do less creations and deletions of SSL contexts.
-13.5 Export session ids
+12.5 Export session ids
Add an interface to libcurl that enables "session IDs" to get
exported/imported. Cris Bailiff said: "OpenSSL has functions which can
the state from such a buffer at a later date - this is used by mod_ssl for
apache to implement and SSL session ID cache".
-13.6 Provide callback for cert verification
+12.6 Provide callback for cert verification
OpenSSL supports a callback for customised verification of the peer
certificate, but this doesn't seem to be exposed in the libcurl APIs. Could
it be? There's so much that could be done if it were!
-13.7 improve configure --with-ssl
+12.7 improve configure --with-ssl
make the configure --with-ssl option first check for OpenSSL, then GnuTLS,
then NSS...
-13.8 Support DANE
+12.8 Support DANE
DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) is a way to provide SSL
keys and certs over DNS using DNSSEC as an alternative to the CA model.
- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6698.txt
+ http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6698.txt
An initial patch was posted by Suresh Krishnaswamy on March 7th 2013
(http://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2013-03/0075.html) but it was a too simple
http://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2013-03/0103.html . libunbound may be the
correct library to base this development on.
-14. GnuTLS
+13. GnuTLS
-14.1 SSL engine stuff
+13.1 SSL engine stuff
Is this even possible?
-14.2 check connection
+13.2 check connection
Add a way to check if the connection seems to be alive, to correspond to the
SSL_peak() way we use with OpenSSL.
-15. WinSSL/SChannel
-
-15.1 Add support for client certificate authentication
-
- WinSSL/SChannel currently makes use of the OS-level system and user
- certificate and private key stores. This does not allow the application
- or the user to supply a custom client certificate using curl or libcurl.
-
- Therefore support for the existing -E/--cert and --key options should be
- implemented by supplying a custom certificate to the SChannel APIs, see:
- - Getting a Certificate for Schannel
- https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa375447.aspx
+14. SASL
-15.2 Add support for custom server certificate validation
+14.1 Other authentication mechanisms
- WinSSL/SChannel currently makes use of the OS-level system and user
- certificate trust store. This does not allow the application or user to
- customize the server certificate validation process using curl or libcurl.
-
- Therefore support for the existing --cacert or --capath options should be
- implemented by supplying a custom certificate to the SChannel APIs, see:
- - Getting a Certificate for Schannel
- https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa375447.aspx
-
-15.3 Add support for the --ciphers option
-
- The cipher suites used by WinSSL/SChannel are configured on an OS-level
- instead of an application-level. This does not allow the application or
- the user to customize the configured cipher suites using curl or libcurl.
-
- Therefore support for the existing --ciphers option should be implemented
- by mapping the OpenSSL/GnuTLS cipher suites to the SChannel APIs, see
- - Specifying Schannel Ciphers and Cipher Strengths
- https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa380161.aspx
-
-16. SASL
-
-16.1 Other authentication mechanisms
-
- Add support for other authentication mechanisms such as OLP,
+ Add support for other authentication mechanisms such as EXTERNAL, OLP,
GSS-SPNEGO and others.
-16.2 Add QOP support to GSSAPI authentication
+14.2 Add QOP support to GSSAPI authentication
Currently the GSSAPI authentication only supports the default QOP of auth
(Authentication), whilst Kerberos V5 supports both auth-int (Authentication
with integrity protection) and auth-conf (Authentication with integrity and
privacy protection).
-17. Client
+15. Client
-17.1 sync
+15.1 sync
"curl --sync http://example.com/feed[1-100].rss" or
"curl --sync http://example.net/{index,calendar,history}.html"
remote file is newer than the local file. A Last-Modified HTTP date header
should also be used to set the mod date on the downloaded file.
-17.2 glob posts
+15.2 glob posts
Globbing support for -d and -F, as in 'curl -d "name=foo[0-9]" URL'.
This is easily scripted though.
-17.3 prevent file overwriting
+15.3 prevent file overwriting
Add an option that prevents cURL from overwriting existing local files. When
used, and there already is an existing file with the target file name
existing). So that index.html becomes first index.html.1 and then
index.html.2 etc.
-17.4 simultaneous parallel transfers
+15.4 simultaneous parallel transfers
The client could be told to use maximum N simultaneous parallel transfers and
then just make sure that happens. It should of course not make more than one
connection to the same remote host. This would require the client to use the
multi interface. http://curl.haxx.se/bug/feature.cgi?id=1558595
-17.5 provide formpost headers
+15.5 provide formpost headers
Extending the capabilities of the multipart formposting. How about leaving
the ';type=foo' syntax as it is and adding an extra tag (headers) which
which should overwrite the program reasonable defaults (plain/text,
8bit...)
-17.6 warning when setting an option
-
- Display a warning when libcurl returns an error when setting an option.
- This can be useful to tell when support for a particular feature hasn't been
- compiled into the library.
-
-17.7 warning when sending binary output to terminal
-
- Provide a way that prompts the user for confirmation before binary data is
- sent to the terminal, much in the style 'less' does it.
-
-17.8 offer color-coded HTTP header output
-
- By offering different color output on the header name and the header
- contents, they could be made more readable and thus help users working on
- HTTP services.
-
-17.9 Choose the name of file in braces for complex URLs
-
- When using braces to download a list of URLs and you use complicated names
- in the list of alternatives, it could be handy to allow curl to use other
- names when saving.
-
- Consider a way to offer that. Possibly like
- {partURL1:name1,partURL2:name2,partURL3:name3} where the name following the
- colon is the output name.
-
- See https://github.com/bagder/curl/issues/221
-
-17.10 improve how curl works in a windows console window
-
- If you pull the scrollbar when transferring with curl in a Windows console
- window, the transfer is interrupted and can get disconnected. This can
- probably be improved. See https://github.com/bagder/curl/issues/322
+15.6 warning when setting an option
+ Display a warning when libcurl returns an error when setting an option.
+ This can be useful to tell when support for a particular feature hasn't been
+ compiled into the library.
-18. Build
+16. Build
-18.1 roffit
+16.1 roffit
Consider extending 'roffit' to produce decent ASCII output, and use that
instead of (g)nroff when building src/tool_hugehelp.c
-19. Test suite
+17. Test suite
-19.1 SSL tunnel
+17.1 SSL tunnel
Make our own version of stunnel for simple port forwarding to enable HTTPS
and FTP-SSL tests without the stunnel dependency, and it could allow us to
provide test tools built with either OpenSSL or GnuTLS
-19.2 nicer lacking perl message
+17.2 nicer lacking perl message
If perl wasn't found by the configure script, don't attempt to run the tests
but explain something nice why it doesn't.
-19.3 more protocols supported
+17.3 more protocols supported
Extend the test suite to include more protocols. The telnet could just do FTP
or http operations (for which we have test servers).
-19.4 more platforms supported
+17.4 more platforms supported
Make the test suite work on more platforms. OpenBSD and Mac OS. Remove
fork()s and it should become even more portable.
-19.5 Add support for concurrent connections
+17.5 Add support for concurrent connections
Tests 836, 882 and 938 were designed to verify that separate connections aren't
used when using different login credentials in protocols that shouldn't re-use
and thus the wait for connections loop is never entered to receive the second
connection.
-20. Next SONAME bump
+18. Next SONAME bump
-20.1 http-style HEAD output for FTP
+18.1 http-style HEAD output for FTP
#undef CURL_FTP_HTTPSTYLE_HEAD in lib/ftp.c to remove the HTTP-style headers
from being output in NOBODY requests over FTP
-20.2 combine error codes
+18.2 combine error codes
Combine some of the error codes to remove duplicates. The original
numbering should not be changed, and the old identifiers would be
CURLE_TFTP_PERM => CURLE_REMOTE_ACCESS_DENIED
-20.3 extend CURLOPT_SOCKOPTFUNCTION prototype
+18.3 extend CURLOPT_SOCKOPTFUNCTION prototype
The current prototype only provides 'purpose' that tells what the
connection/socket is for, but not any protocol or similar. It makes it hard
for applications to differentiate on TCP vs UDP and even HTTP vs FTP and
similar.
-21. Next major release
+19. Next major release
-21.1 cleanup return codes
+19.1 cleanup return codes
curl_easy_cleanup() returns void, but curl_multi_cleanup() returns a
CURLMcode. These should be changed to be the same.
-21.2 remove obsolete defines
+19.2 remove obsolete defines
remove obsolete defines from curl/curl.h
-21.3 size_t
+19.3 size_t
make several functions use size_t instead of int in their APIs
-21.4 remove several functions
+19.4 remove several functions
remove the following functions from the public API:
curl_multi_socket_all
-21.5 remove CURLOPT_FAILONERROR
+19.5 remove CURLOPT_FAILONERROR
Remove support for CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, it has gotten too kludgy and weird
internally. Let the app judge success or not for itself.
-21.6 remove CURLOPT_DNS_USE_GLOBAL_CACHE
+19.6 remove CURLOPT_DNS_USE_GLOBAL_CACHE
Remove support for a global DNS cache. Anything global is silly, and we
already offer the share interface for the same functionality but done
"right".
-21.7 remove progress meter from libcurl
+19.7 remove progress meter from libcurl
The internally provided progress meter output doesn't belong in the library.
Basically no application wants it (apart from curl) but instead applications
variable types passed to it instead of doubles so that big files work
correctly.
-21.8 remove 'curl_httppost' from public
+19.8 remove 'curl_httppost' from public
curl_formadd() was made to fill in a public struct, but the fact that the
struct is public is never really used by application for their own advantage
Changing them to return a private handle will benefit the implementation and
allow us much greater freedoms while still maintaining a solid API and ABI.
-21.9 have form functions use CURL handle argument
+19.9 have form functions use CURL handle argument
curl_formadd() and curl_formget() both currently have no CURL handle
argument, but both can use a callback that is set in the easy handle, and
curl_easy_perform() (or similar) called - which is hard to grasp and a design
mistake.
-21.10 Add CURLOPT_MAIL_CLIENT option
+19.10 Add CURLOPT_MAIL_CLIENT option
Rather than use the URL to specify the mail client string to present in the
HELO and EHLO commands, libcurl should support a new CURLOPT specifically for
projects / platform / upstream / curl.git / blobdiff