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6
7 Things that could be nice to do in the future
8
9 Things to do in project curl. Please tell us what you think, contribute and
10 send us patches that improve things!
11
12 Be aware that these are things that we could do, or have once been considered
13 things we could do. If you want to work on any of these areas, please
14 consider bringing it up for discussions first on the mailing list so that we
15 all agree it is still a good idea for the project!
16
17 All bugs documented in the KNOWN_BUGS document are subject for fixing!
18
19 1. libcurl
20 1.2 More data sharing
21 1.3 struct lifreq
22 1.4 signal-based resolver timeouts
23 1.5 get rid of PATH_MAX
24 1.6 Modified buffer size approach
25 1.7 Detect when called from within callbacks
26 1.8 CURLOPT_RESOLVE for any port number
27 1.9 Cache negative name resolves
28 1.11 minimize dependencies with dynamically loaded modules
29 1.12 have form functions use CURL handle argument
30 1.14 Typesafe curl_easy_setopt()
31 1.15 Monitor connections in the connection pool
32 1.16 Try to URL encode given URL
33 1.17 Add support for IRIs
34 1.18 try next proxy if one doesn't work
35 1.19 Timeout idle connections from the pool
36 1.20 SRV and URI DNS records
37 1.21 API for URL parsing/splitting
38 1.23 Offer API to flush the connection pool
39 1.24 TCP Fast Open for windows
40 1.25 Remove the generated include file
41
42 2. libcurl - multi interface
43 2.1 More non-blocking
44 2.2 Better support for same name resolves
45 2.3 Non-blocking curl_multi_remove_handle()
46 2.4 Split connect and authentication process
47 2.5 Edge-triggered sockets should work
48
49 3. Documentation
50 3.2 Provide cmake config-file
51
52 4. FTP
53 4.1 HOST
54 4.2 Alter passive/active on failure and retry
55 4.3 Earlier bad letter detection
56 4.4 REST for large files
57 4.5 ASCII support
58 4.6 GSSAPI via Windows SSPI
59 4.7 STAT for LIST without data connection
60
61 5. HTTP
62 5.1 Better persistency for HTTP 1.0
63 5.2 support FF3 sqlite cookie files
64 5.3 Rearrange request header order
65 5.4 HTTP Digest using SHA-256
66 5.5 auth= in URLs
67 5.6 Refuse "downgrade" redirects
68 5.7 Brotli compression
69 5.8 QUIC
70 5.9 Improve formpost API
71 5.10 Leave secure cookies alone
72 5.11 Chunked transfer multipart formpost
73 5.12 OPTIONS *
74
75 6. TELNET
76 6.1 ditch stdin
77 6.2 ditch telnet-specific select
78 6.3 feature negotiation debug data
79
80 7. SMTP
81 7.1 Pipelining
82 7.2 Enhanced capability support
83 7.3 Add CURLOPT_MAIL_CLIENT option
84
85 8. POP3
86 8.1 Pipelining
87 8.2 Enhanced capability support
88
89 9. IMAP
90 9.1 Enhanced capability support
91
92 10. LDAP
93 10.1 SASL based authentication mechanisms
94
95 11. SMB
96 11.1 File listing support
97 11.2 Honor file timestamps
98 11.3 Use NTLMv2
99 11.4 Create remote directories
100
101 12. New protocols
102 12.1 RSYNC
103
104 13. SSL
105 13.1 Disable specific versions
106 13.2 Provide mutex locking API
107 13.3 Evaluate SSL patches
108 13.4 Cache/share OpenSSL contexts
109 13.5 Export session ids
110 13.6 Provide callback for cert verification
111 13.7 improve configure --with-ssl
112 13.8 Support DANE
113 13.10 Support SSLKEYLOGFILE
114 13.11 Support intermediate & root pinning for PINNEDPUBLICKEY
115 13.12 Support HSTS
116 13.13 Support HPKP
117
118 14. GnuTLS
119 14.1 SSL engine stuff
120 14.2 check connection
121
122 15. WinSSL/SChannel
123 15.1 Add support for client certificate authentication
124 15.2 Add support for custom server certificate validation
125 15.3 Add support for the --ciphers option
126
127 16. SASL
128 16.1 Other authentication mechanisms
129 16.2 Add QOP support to GSSAPI authentication
130 16.3 Support binary messages (i.e.: non-base64)
131
132 17. SSH protocols
133 17.1 Multiplexing
134 17.2 SFTP performance
135 17.3 Support better than MD5 hostkey hash
136
137 18. Command line tool
138 18.1 sync
139 18.2 glob posts
140 18.3 prevent file overwriting
141 18.4 simultaneous parallel transfers
142 18.5 provide formpost headers
143 18.6 warning when setting an option
144 18.7 warning when sending binary output to terminal
145 18.8 offer color-coded HTTP header output
146 18.9 Choose the name of file in braces for complex URLs
147 18.10 improve how curl works in a windows console window
148 18.11 -w output to stderr
149 18.12 keep running, read instructions from pipe/socket
150 18.13 support metalink in http headers
151 18.14 --fail without --location should treat 3xx as a failure
152 18.15 --retry should resume
153 18.16 send only part of --data
154 18.17 consider file name from the redirected URL with -O ?
155
156 19. Build
157 19.1 roffit
158 19.2 Enable PIE and RELRO by default
159
160 20. Test suite
161 20.1 SSL tunnel
162 20.2 nicer lacking perl message
163 20.3 more protocols supported
164 20.4 more platforms supported
165 20.5 Add support for concurrent connections
166 20.6 Use the RFC6265 test suite
167
168 21. Next SONAME bump
169 21.1 http-style HEAD output for FTP
170 21.2 combine error codes
171 21.3 extend CURLOPT_SOCKOPTFUNCTION prototype
172
173 22. Next major release
174 22.1 cleanup return codes
175 22.2 remove obsolete defines
176 22.3 size_t
177 22.4 remove several functions
178 22.5 remove CURLOPT_FAILONERROR
179 22.6 remove CURLOPT_DNS_USE_GLOBAL_CACHE
180 22.7 remove progress meter from libcurl
181 22.8 remove 'curl_httppost' from public
182
183==============================================================================
184
1851. libcurl
186
1871.2 More data sharing
188
189 curl_share_* functions already exist and work, and they can be extended to
190 share more. For example, enable sharing of the ares channel and the
191 connection cache.
192
1931.3 struct lifreq
194
195 Use 'struct lifreq' and SIOCGLIFADDR instead of 'struct ifreq' and
196 SIOCGIFADDR on newer Solaris versions as they claim the latter is obsolete.
197 To support IPv6 interface addresses for network interfaces properly.
198
1991.4 signal-based resolver timeouts
200
201 libcurl built without an asynchronous resolver library uses alarm() to time
202 out DNS lookups. When a timeout occurs, this causes libcurl to jump from the
203 signal handler back into the library with a sigsetjmp, which effectively
204 causes libcurl to continue running within the signal handler. This is
205 non-portable and could cause problems on some platforms. A discussion on the
206 problem is available at https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2008-09/0197.html
207
208 Also, alarm() provides timeout resolution only to the nearest second. alarm
209 ought to be replaced by setitimer on systems that support it.
210
2111.5 get rid of PATH_MAX
212
213 Having code use and rely on PATH_MAX is not nice:
214 http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2007/11/pathmax-simply-isnt.html
215
216 Currently the SSH based code uses it a bit, but to remove PATH_MAX from there
217 we need libssh2 to properly tell us when we pass in a too small buffer and
218 its current API (as of libssh2 1.2.7) doesn't.
219
2201.6 Modified buffer size approach
221
222 Current libcurl allocates a fixed 16K size buffer for download and an
223 additional 16K for upload. They are always unconditionally part of the easy
224 handle. If CRLF translations are requested, an additional 32K "scratch
225 buffer" is allocated. A total of 64K transfer buffers in the worst case.
226
227 First, while the handles are not actually in use these buffers could be freed
228 so that lingering handles just kept in queues or whatever waste less memory.
229
230 Secondly, SFTP is a protocol that needs to handle many ~30K blocks at once
231 since each need to be individually acked and therefore libssh2 must be
232 allowed to send (or receive) many separate ones in parallel to achieve high
233 transfer speeds. A current libcurl build with a 16K buffer makes that
234 impossible, but one with a 512K buffer will reach MUCH faster transfers. But
235 allocating 512K unconditionally for all buffers just in case they would like
236 to do fast SFTP transfers at some point is not a good solution either.
237
238 Dynamically allocate buffer size depending on protocol in use in combination
239 with freeing it after each individual transfer? Other suggestions?
240
2411.7 Detect when called from within callbacks
242
243 We should set a state variable before calling callbacks, so that we
244 subsequently can add code within libcurl that returns error if called within
245 callbacks for when that's not supported.
246
2471.8 CURLOPT_RESOLVE for any port number
248
249 This option allows applications to set a replacement IP address for a given
250 host + port pair. Consider making support for providing a replacement address
251 for the host name on all port numbers.
252
253 See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1264
254
2551.9 Cache negative name resolves
256
257 A name resolve that has failed is likely to fail when made again within a
258 short period of time. Currently we only cache positive responses.
259
2601.11 minimize dependencies with dynamically loaded modules
261
262 We can create a system with loadable modules/plug-ins, where these modules
263 would be the ones that link to 3rd party libs. That would allow us to avoid
264 having to load ALL dependencies since only the necessary ones for this
265 app/invoke/used protocols would be necessary to load. See
266 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/349
267
2681.12 have form functions use CURL handle argument
269
270 curl_formadd() and curl_formget() both currently have no CURL handle
271 argument, but both can use a callback that is set in the easy handle, and
272 thus curl_formget() with callback cannot function without first having
273 curl_easy_perform() (or similar) called - which is hard to grasp and a design
274 mistake.
275
276 The curl_formadd() design can probably also be reconsidered to make it easier
277 to use and less error-prone. Probably easiest by splitting it into several
278 function calls.
279
2801.14 Typesafe curl_easy_setopt()
281
282 One of the most common problems in libcurl using applications is the lack of
283 type checks for curl_easy_setopt() which happens because it accepts varargs
284 and thus can take any type.
285
286 One possible solution to this is to introduce a few different versions of the
287 setopt version for the different kinds of data you can set.
288
289 curl_easy_set_num() - sets a long value
290
291 curl_easy_set_large() - sets a curl_off_t value
292
293 curl_easy_set_ptr() - sets a pointer
294
295 curl_easy_set_cb() - sets a callback PLUS its callback data
296
2971.15 Monitor connections in the connection pool
298
299 libcurl's connection cache or pool holds a number of open connections for the
300 purpose of possible subsequent connection reuse. It may contain a few up to a
301 significant amount of connections. Currently, libcurl leaves all connections
302 as they are and first when a connection is iterated over for matching or
303 reuse purpose it is verified that it is still alive.
304
305 Those connections may get closed by the server side for idleness or they may
306 get a HTTP/2 ping from the peer to verify that they're still alive. By adding
307 monitoring of the connections while in the pool, libcurl can detect dead
308 connections (and close them) better and earlier, and it can handle HTTP/2
309 pings to keep such ones alive even when not actively doing transfers on them.
310
3111.16 Try to URL encode given URL
312
313 Given a URL that for example contains spaces, libcurl could have an option
314 that would try somewhat harder than it does now and convert spaces to %20 and
315 perhaps URL encoded byte values over 128 etc (basically do what the redirect
316 following code already does).
317
318 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/514
319
3201.17 Add support for IRIs
321
322 IRIs (RFC 3987) allow localized, non-ascii, names in the URL. To properly
323 support this, curl/libcurl would need to translate/encode the given input
324 from the input string encoding into percent encoded output "over the wire".
325
326 To make that work smoothly for curl users even on Windows, curl would
327 probably need to be able to convert from several input encodings.
328
3291.18 try next proxy if one doesn't work
330
331 Allow an application to specify a list of proxies to try, and failing to
332 connect to the first go on and try the next instead until the list is
333 exhausted. Browsers support this feature at least when they specify proxies
334 using PACs.
335
336 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/896
337
3381.19 Timeout idle connections from the pool
339
340 libcurl currently keeps connections in its connection pool for an indefinite
341 period of time, until it either gets reused, gets noticed that it has been
342 closed by the server or gets pruned to make room for a new connection.
343
344 To reduce overhead (especially for when we add monitoring of the connections
345 in the pool), we should introduce a timeout so that connections that have
346 been idle for N seconds get closed.
347
3481.20 SRV and URI DNS records
349
350 Offer support for resolving SRV and URI DNS records for libcurl to know which
351 server to connect to for various protocols (including HTTP!).
352
3531.21 API for URL parsing/splitting
354
355 libcurl has always parsed URLs internally and never exposed any API or
356 features to allow applications to do it. Still most or many applications
357 using libcurl need that ability. In polls to users, we've learned that many
358 libcurl users would like to see and use such an API.
359
3601.23 Offer API to flush the connection pool
361
362 Sometimes applications want to flush all the existing connections kept alive.
363 An API could allow a forced flush or just a forced loop that would properly
364 close all connections that have been closed by the server already.
365
3661.24 TCP Fast Open for windows
367
368 libcurl supports the CURLOPT_TCP_FASTOPEN option since 7.49.0 for Linux and
369 Mac OS. Windows supports TCP Fast Open starting with Windows 10, version 1607
370 and we should add support for it.
371
3721.25 Remove the generated include file
373
374 When curl and libcurl are built, one of the public include files are
375 generated and is populated with a set of defines that are derevid from sizes
376 and constants for the particular target architecture that build is made. For
377 platforms that can select between 32 bit and 64 bit at build time, this
378 approach makes the libcurl build only create a set of public headers suitable
379 for one of the architectures and not both. If you build libcurl for such a
380 platform and you want to allow applications to get built using either 32/64
381 version, you must generate the libcurl headers once for each setup and you
382 must then add a replacement curl header that would itself select the correct
383 32 or 64 bit specific header as necessary.
384
385 Your curl/curl.h alternative could then look like (replace with suitable CPP
386 variable to check):
387
388 #ifdef ARCH_32bit
389 #include <curl32/curl.h>
390 #else /* ARCH_64bit */
391 #include <curl64/curl.h>
392 #endif
393
394 A fix would either (A) fix the 32/64 setup automatically or even better (B)
395 work away the architecture specific defines from the headers so that they can
396 be used for all architectures independently of what libcurl was built for.
397
398
3992. libcurl - multi interface
400
4012.1 More non-blocking
402
403 Make sure we don't ever loop because of non-blocking sockets returning
404 EWOULDBLOCK or similar. Blocking cases include:
405
406 - Name resolves on non-windows unless c-ares or the threaded resolver is used
407 - HTTP proxy CONNECT operations
408 - SOCKS proxy handshakes
409 - file:// transfers
410 - TELNET transfers
411 - The "DONE" operation (post transfer protocol-specific actions) for the
412 protocols SFTP, SMTP, FTP. Fixing Curl_done() for this is a worthy task.
413
4142.2 Better support for same name resolves
415
416 If a name resolve has been initiated for name NN and a second easy handle
417 wants to resolve that name as well, make it wait for the first resolve to end
418 up in the cache instead of doing a second separate resolve. This is
419 especially needed when adding many simultaneous handles using the same host
420 name when the DNS resolver can get flooded.
421
4222.3 Non-blocking curl_multi_remove_handle()
423
424 The multi interface has a few API calls that assume a blocking behavior, like
425 add_handle() and remove_handle() which limits what we can do internally. The
426 multi API need to be moved even more into a single function that "drives"
427 everything in a non-blocking manner and signals when something is done. A
428 remove or add would then only ask for the action to get started and then
429 multi_perform() etc still be called until the add/remove is completed.
430
4312.4 Split connect and authentication process
432
433 The multi interface treats the authentication process as part of the connect
434 phase. As such any failures during authentication won't trigger the relevant
435 QUIT or LOGOFF for protocols such as IMAP, POP3 and SMTP.
436
4372.5 Edge-triggered sockets should work
438
439 The multi_socket API should work with edge-triggered socket events. One of
440 the internal actions that need to be improved for this to work perfectly is
441 the 'maxloops' handling in transfer.c:readwrite_data().
442
4433. Documentation
444
4453.2 Provide cmake config-file
446
447 A config-file package is a set of files provided by us to allow applications
448 to write cmake scripts to find and use libcurl easier. See
449 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/885
450
4514. FTP
452
4534.1 HOST
454
455 HOST is a command for a client to tell which host name to use, to offer FTP
456 servers named-based virtual hosting:
457
458 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7151
459
4604.2 Alter passive/active on failure and retry
461
462 When trying to connect passively to a server which only supports active
463 connections, libcurl returns CURLE_FTP_WEIRD_PASV_REPLY and closes the
464 connection. There could be a way to fallback to an active connection (and
465 vice versa). https://curl.haxx.se/bug/feature.cgi?id=1754793
466
4674.3 Earlier bad letter detection
468
469 Make the detection of (bad) %0d and %0a codes in FTP URL parts earlier in the
470 process to avoid doing a resolve and connect in vain.
471
4724.4 REST for large files
473
474 REST fix for servers not behaving well on >2GB requests. This should fail if
475 the server doesn't set the pointer to the requested index. The tricky
476 (impossible?) part is to figure out if the server did the right thing or not.
477
4784.5 ASCII support
479
480 FTP ASCII transfers do not follow RFC959. They don't convert the data
481 accordingly.
482
4834.6 GSSAPI via Windows SSPI
484
485In addition to currently supporting the SASL GSSAPI mechanism (Kerberos V5)
486via third-party GSS-API libraries, such as Heimdal or MIT Kerberos, also add
487support for GSSAPI authentication via Windows SSPI.
488
4894.7 STAT for LIST without data connection
490
491Some FTP servers allow STAT for listing directories instead of using LIST, and
492the response is then sent over the control connection instead of as the
493otherwise usedw data connection: http://www.nsftools.com/tips/RawFTP.htm#STAT
494
495This is not detailed in any FTP specification.
496
4975. HTTP
498
4995.1 Better persistency for HTTP 1.0
500
501 "Better" support for persistent connections over HTTP 1.0
502 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/feature.cgi?id=1089001
503
5045.2 support FF3 sqlite cookie files
505
506 Firefox 3 is changing from its former format to a a sqlite database instead.
507 We should consider how (lib)curl can/should support this.
508 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/feature.cgi?id=1871388
509
5105.3 Rearrange request header order
511
512 Server implementors often make an effort to detect browser and to reject
513 clients it can detect to not match. One of the last details we cannot yet
514 control in libcurl's HTTP requests, which also can be exploited to detect
515 that libcurl is in fact used even when it tries to impersonate a browser, is
516 the order of the request headers. I propose that we introduce a new option in
517 which you give headers a value, and then when the HTTP request is built it
518 sorts the headers based on that number. We could then have internally created
519 headers use a default value so only headers that need to be moved have to be
520 specified.
521
5225.4 HTTP Digest using SHA-256
523
524 RFC 7616 introduces an update to the HTTP Digest authentication
525 specification, which amongst other thing defines how new digest algorithms
526 can be used instead of MD5 which is considered old and not recommended.
527
528 See https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7616 and
529 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1018
530
5315.5 auth= in URLs
532
533 Add the ability to specify the preferred authentication mechanism to use by
534 using ;auth=<mech> in the login part of the URL.
535
536 For example:
537
538 http://test:pass;auth=NTLM@example.com would be equivalent to specifying --user
539 test:pass;auth=NTLM or --user test:pass --ntlm from the command line.
540
541 Additionally this should be implemented for proxy base URLs as well.
542
5435.6 Refuse "downgrade" redirects
544
545 See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/226
546
547 Consider a way to tell curl to refuse to "downgrade" protocol with a redirect
548 and/or possibly a bit that refuses redirect to change protocol completely.
549
5505.7 Brotli compression
551
552 Brotli compression performs better than gzip and is being implemented by
553 browsers and servers widely. The algorithm: https://github.com/google/brotli
554 The Firefox bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=366559
555
5565.8 QUIC
557
558 The standardization process of QUIC has been taken to the IETF and can be
559 followed on the [IETF QUIC Mailing
560 list](https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/quic). I'd like us to get on the
561 bandwagon. Ideally, this would be done with a separate library/project to
562 handle the binary/framing layer in a similar fashion to how HTTP/2 is
563 implemented. This, to allow other projects to benefit from the work and to
564 thus broaden the interest and chance of others to participate.
565
5665.9 Improve formpost API
567
568 Revamp the formpost API and making something that is easier to use and
569 understand:
570
571 https://github.com/curl/curl/wiki/formpost-API-redesigned
572
5735.10 Leave secure cookies alone
574
575 Non-secure origins (HTTP sites) should not be allowed to set or modify
576 cookies with the 'secure' property:
577
578 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-cookie-alone-01
579
5805.11 Chunked transfer multipart formpost
581
582 For a case where the file is being made during the upload is progressing
583 (like passed on stdin to the curl tool), we cannot know the size before-hand
584 and we rather not read the entire thing into memory before it can start the
585 upload.
586
587 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1139
588
5895.12 OPTIONS *
590
591 HTTP defines an OPTIONS method that can be sent with an asterisk option like
592 "OPTIONS *" to ask about options from the server and not a specific URL
593 resource. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7230#section-5.3.4
594
595 libcurl as it currently works will always sent HTTP methods with a path that
596 starts with a slash so there's no way for an application to send a proper
597 "OPTIONS *" using libcurl. This should be fixed.
598
599 I can't think of any other non-slash paths we should support so it will
600 probably make sense to add a new boolean option for issuign an "OPTIONS *"
601 request. CURLOPT_OPTIONSASTERISK perhaps (and a corresponding command line
602 option)?
603
604 See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1280
605
606
6076. TELNET
608
6096.1 ditch stdin
610
611Reading input (to send to the remote server) on stdin is a crappy solution for
612library purposes. We need to invent a good way for the application to be able
613to provide the data to send.
614
6156.2 ditch telnet-specific select
616
617 Move the telnet support's network select() loop go away and merge the code
618 into the main transfer loop. Until this is done, the multi interface won't
619 work for telnet.
620
6216.3 feature negotiation debug data
622
623 Add telnet feature negotiation data to the debug callback as header data.
624
625
6267. SMTP
627
6287.1 Pipelining
629
630 Add support for pipelining emails.
631
6327.2 Enhanced capability support
633
634 Add the ability, for an application that uses libcurl, to obtain the list of
635 capabilities returned from the EHLO command.
636
6377.3 Add CURLOPT_MAIL_CLIENT option
638
639 Rather than use the URL to specify the mail client string to present in the
640 HELO and EHLO commands, libcurl should support a new CURLOPT specifically for
641 specifying this data as the URL is non-standard and to be honest a bit of a
642 hack ;-)
643
644 Please see the following thread for more information:
645 https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2012-05/0178.html
646
647
6488. POP3
649
6508.1 Pipelining
651
652 Add support for pipelining commands.
653
6548.2 Enhanced capability support
655
656 Add the ability, for an application that uses libcurl, to obtain the list of
657 capabilities returned from the CAPA command.
658
6599. IMAP
660
6619.1 Enhanced capability support
662
663 Add the ability, for an application that uses libcurl, to obtain the list of
664 capabilities returned from the CAPABILITY command.
665
66610. LDAP
667
66810.1 SASL based authentication mechanisms
669
670 Currently the LDAP module only supports ldap_simple_bind_s() in order to bind
671 to an LDAP server. However, this function sends username and password details
672 using the simple authentication mechanism (as clear text). However, it should
673 be possible to use ldap_bind_s() instead specifying the security context
674 information ourselves.
675
67611. SMB
677
67811.1 File listing support
679
680Add support for listing the contents of a SMB share. The output should probably
681be the same as/similar to FTP.
682
68311.2 Honor file timestamps
684
685The timestamp of the transferred file should reflect that of the original file.
686
68711.3 Use NTLMv2
688
689Currently the SMB authentication uses NTLMv1.
690
69111.4 Create remote directories
692
693Support for creating remote directories when uploading a file to a directory
694that doesn't exist on the server, just like --ftp-create-dirs.
695
69612. New protocols
697
69812.1 RSYNC
699
700 There's no RFC for the protocol or an URI/URL format. An implementation
701 should most probably use an existing rsync library, such as librsync.
702
70313. SSL
704
70513.1 Disable specific versions
706
707 Provide an option that allows for disabling specific SSL versions, such as
708 SSLv2 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/feature.cgi?id=1767276
709
71013.2 Provide mutex locking API
711
712 Provide a libcurl API for setting mutex callbacks in the underlying SSL
713 library, so that the same application code can use mutex-locking
714 independently of OpenSSL or GnutTLS being used.
715
71613.3 Evaluate SSL patches
717
718 Evaluate/apply Gertjan van Wingerde's SSL patches:
719 https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2004-03/0087.html
720
72113.4 Cache/share OpenSSL contexts
722
723 "Look at SSL cafile - quick traces look to me like these are done on every
724 request as well, when they should only be necessary once per SSL context (or
725 once per handle)". The major improvement we can rather easily do is to make
726 sure we don't create and kill a new SSL "context" for every request, but
727 instead make one for every connection and re-use that SSL context in the same
728 style connections are re-used. It will make us use slightly more memory but
729 it will libcurl do less creations and deletions of SSL contexts.
730
731 Technically, the "caching" is probably best implemented by getting added to
732 the share interface so that easy handles who want to and can reuse the
733 context specify that by sharing with the right properties set.
734
735 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1110
736
73713.5 Export session ids
738
739 Add an interface to libcurl that enables "session IDs" to get
740 exported/imported. Cris Bailiff said: "OpenSSL has functions which can
741 serialise the current SSL state to a buffer of your choice, and recover/reset
742 the state from such a buffer at a later date - this is used by mod_ssl for
743 apache to implement and SSL session ID cache".
744
74513.6 Provide callback for cert verification
746
747 OpenSSL supports a callback for customised verification of the peer
748 certificate, but this doesn't seem to be exposed in the libcurl APIs. Could
749 it be? There's so much that could be done if it were!
750
75113.7 improve configure --with-ssl
752
753 make the configure --with-ssl option first check for OpenSSL, then GnuTLS,
754 then NSS...
755
75613.8 Support DANE
757
758 DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) is a way to provide SSL
759 keys and certs over DNS using DNSSEC as an alternative to the CA model.
760 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6698.txt
761
762 An initial patch was posted by Suresh Krishnaswamy on March 7th 2013
763 (https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2013-03/0075.html) but it was a too simple
764 approach. See Daniel's comments:
765 https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2013-03/0103.html . libunbound may be the
766 correct library to base this development on.
767
768 Björn Stenberg wrote a separate initial take on DANE that was never
769 completed.
770
77113.10 Support SSLKEYLOGFILE
772
773 When used, Firefox and Chrome dumps their master TLS keys to the file name
774 this environment variable specifies. This allows tools like for example
775 Wireshark to capture and decipher TLS traffic to/from those clients. libcurl
776 could be made to support this more widely (presumably this already works when
777 built with NSS). Peter Wu made a OpenSSL preload to make possible that can be
778 used as inspiration and guidance
779 https://git.lekensteyn.nl/peter/wireshark-notes/tree/src/sslkeylog.c
780
78113.11 Support intermediate & root pinning for PINNEDPUBLICKEY
782
783 CURLOPT_PINNEDPUBLICKEY does not consider the hashes of intermediate & root
784 certificates when comparing the pinned keys. Therefore it is not compatible
785 with "HTTP Public Key Pinning" as there also intermediate and root certificates
786 can be pinned. This is very useful as it prevents webadmins from "locking
787 themself out of their servers".
788
789 Adding this feature would make curls pinning 100% compatible to HPKP and allow
790 more flexible pinning.
791
79213.12 Support HSTS
793
794 "HTTP Strict Transport Security" is TOFU (trust on first use), time-based
795 features indicated by a HTTP header send by the webserver. It is widely used
796 in browsers and it's purpose is to prevent insecure HTTP connections after
797 a previous HTTPS connection. It protects against SSLStripping attacks.
798
799 Doc: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/HTTP_strict_transport_security
800 RFC 6797: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6797
801
80213.13 Support HPKP
803
804 "HTTP Public Key Pinning" is TOFU (trust on first use), time-based
805 features indicated by a HTTP header send by the webserver. It's purpose is
806 to prevent Man-in-the-middle attacks by trusted CAs by allowing webadmins
807 to specify which CAs/certificates/public keys to trust when connection to
808 their websites.
809
810 It can be build based on PINNEDPUBLICKEY.
811
812 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Public_Key_Pinning
813 OWASP: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Certificate_and_Public_Key_Pinning
814 Doc: https://developer.mozilla.org/de/docs/Web/Security/Public_Key_Pinning
815 RFC: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-websec-key-pinning-21
816
81714. GnuTLS
818
81914.1 SSL engine stuff
820
821 Is this even possible?
822
82314.2 check connection
824
825 Add a way to check if the connection seems to be alive, to correspond to the
826 SSL_peak() way we use with OpenSSL.
827
82815. WinSSL/SChannel
829
83015.1 Add support for client certificate authentication
831
832 WinSSL/SChannel currently makes use of the OS-level system and user
833 certificate and private key stores. This does not allow the application
834 or the user to supply a custom client certificate using curl or libcurl.
835
836 Therefore support for the existing -E/--cert and --key options should be
837 implemented by supplying a custom certificate to the SChannel APIs, see:
838 - Getting a Certificate for Schannel
839 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa375447.aspx
840
84115.2 Add support for custom server certificate validation
842
843 WinSSL/SChannel currently makes use of the OS-level system and user
844 certificate trust store. This does not allow the application or user to
845 customize the server certificate validation process using curl or libcurl.
846
847 Therefore support for the existing --cacert or --capath options should be
848 implemented by supplying a custom certificate to the SChannel APIs, see:
849 - Getting a Certificate for Schannel
850 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa375447.aspx
851
85215.3 Add support for the --ciphers option
853
854 The cipher suites used by WinSSL/SChannel are configured on an OS-level
855 instead of an application-level. This does not allow the application or
856 the user to customize the configured cipher suites using curl or libcurl.
857
858 Therefore support for the existing --ciphers option should be implemented
859 by mapping the OpenSSL/GnuTLS cipher suites to the SChannel APIs, see
860 - Specifying Schannel Ciphers and Cipher Strengths
861 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa380161.aspx
862
86316. SASL
864
86516.1 Other authentication mechanisms
866
867 Add support for other authentication mechanisms such as OLP,
868 GSS-SPNEGO and others.
869
87016.2 Add QOP support to GSSAPI authentication
871
872 Currently the GSSAPI authentication only supports the default QOP of auth
873 (Authentication), whilst Kerberos V5 supports both auth-int (Authentication
874 with integrity protection) and auth-conf (Authentication with integrity and
875 privacy protection).
876
87716.3 Support binary messages (i.e.: non-base64)
878
879 Mandatory to support LDAP SASL authentication.
880
881
88217. SSH protocols
883
88417.1 Multiplexing
885
886 SSH is a perfectly fine multiplexed protocols which would allow libcurl to do
887 multiple parallel transfers from the same host using the same connection,
888 much in the same spirit as HTTP/2 does. libcurl however does not take
889 advantage of that ability but will instead always create a new connection for
890 new transfers even if an existing connection already exists to the host.
891
892 To fix this, libcurl would have to detect an existing connection and "attach"
893 the new transfer to the existing one.
894
89517.2 SFTP performance
896
897 libcurl's SFTP transfer performance is sub par and can be improved, mostly by
898 the approach mentioned in "1.6 Modified buffer size approach".
899
90017.3 Support better than MD5 hostkey hash
901
902 libcurl offers the CURLOPT_SSH_HOST_PUBLIC_KEY_MD5 option for verifying the
903 server's key. MD5 is generally being deprecated so we should implement
904 support for stronger hashing algorithms. libssh2 itself is what provides this
905 underlying functionality and it supports at least SHA-1 as an alternative.
906 SHA-1 is also being deprecated these days so we should consider workign with
907 libssh2 to instead offer support for SHA-256 or similar.
908
909
91018. Command line tool
911
91218.1 sync
913
914 "curl --sync http://example.com/feed[1-100].rss" or
915 "curl --sync http://example.net/{index,calendar,history}.html"
916
917 Downloads a range or set of URLs using the remote name, but only if the
918 remote file is newer than the local file. A Last-Modified HTTP date header
919 should also be used to set the mod date on the downloaded file.
920
92118.2 glob posts
922
923 Globbing support for -d and -F, as in 'curl -d "name=foo[0-9]" URL'.
924 This is easily scripted though.
925
92618.3 prevent file overwriting
927
928 Add an option that prevents curl from overwriting existing local files. When
929 used, and there already is an existing file with the target file name
930 (either -O or -o), a number should be appended (and increased if already
931 existing). So that index.html becomes first index.html.1 and then
932 index.html.2 etc.
933
93418.4 simultaneous parallel transfers
935
936 The client could be told to use maximum N simultaneous parallel transfers and
937 then just make sure that happens. It should of course not make more than one
938 connection to the same remote host. This would require the client to use the
939 multi interface. https://curl.haxx.se/bug/feature.cgi?id=1558595
940
941 Using the multi interface would also allow properly using parallel transfers
942 with HTTP/2 and supporting HTTP/2 server push from the command line.
943
94418.5 provide formpost headers
945
946 Extending the capabilities of the multipart formposting. How about leaving
947 the ';type=foo' syntax as it is and adding an extra tag (headers) which
948 works like this: curl -F "coolfiles=@fil1.txt;headers=@fil1.hdr" where
949 fil1.hdr contains extra headers like
950
951 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=KOI8-R"
952 Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
953 X-User-Comment: Please don't use browser specific HTML code
954
955 which should overwrite the program reasonable defaults (plain/text,
956 8bit...)
957
95818.6 warning when setting an option
959
960 Display a warning when libcurl returns an error when setting an option.
961 This can be useful to tell when support for a particular feature hasn't been
962 compiled into the library.
963
96418.7 warning when sending binary output to terminal
965
966 Provide a way that prompts the user for confirmation before binary data is
967 sent to the terminal, much in the style 'less' does it.
968
96918.8 offer color-coded HTTP header output
970
971 By offering different color output on the header name and the header
972 contents, they could be made more readable and thus help users working on
973 HTTP services.
974
97518.9 Choose the name of file in braces for complex URLs
976
977 When using braces to download a list of URLs and you use complicated names
978 in the list of alternatives, it could be handy to allow curl to use other
979 names when saving.
980
981 Consider a way to offer that. Possibly like
982 {partURL1:name1,partURL2:name2,partURL3:name3} where the name following the
983 colon is the output name.
984
985 See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/221
986
98718.10 improve how curl works in a windows console window
988
989 If you pull the scrollbar when transferring with curl in a Windows console
990 window, the transfer is interrupted and can get disconnected. This can
991 probably be improved. See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/322
992
99318.11 -w output to stderr
994
995 -w is quite useful, but not to those of us who use curl without -o or -O
996 (such as for scripting through a higher level language). It would be nice to
997 have an option that is exactly like -w but sends it to stderr
998 instead. Proposed name: --write-stderr. See
999 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/613
1000
100118.12 keep running, read instructions from pipe/socket
1002
1003 Provide an option that makes curl not exit after the last URL (or even work
1004 without a given URL), and then make it read instructions passed on a pipe or
1005 over a socket to make further instructions so that a second subsequent curl
1006 invoke can talk to the still running instance and ask for transfers to get
1007 done, and thus maintain its connection pool, DNS cache and more.
1008
100918.13 support metalink in http headers
1010
1011 Curl has support for downloading a metalink xml file, processing it, and then
1012 downloading the target of the metalink. This is done via the --metalink option.
1013 It would be nice if metalink also supported downloading via metalink
1014 information that is stored in HTTP headers (RFC 6249). Theoretically this could
1015 also be supported with the --metalink option.
1016
1017 See https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6249
1018
1019 See also https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-wget/2015-06/msg00034.html for
1020 an implematation of this in wget.
1021
102218.14 --fail without --location should treat 3xx as a failure
1023
1024 To allow a command line like this to detect a redirect and consider it a
1025 failure:
1026
1027 curl -v --fail -O https://example.com/curl-7.48.0.tar.gz
1028
1029 ... --fail must treat 3xx responses as failures too. The least problematic
1030 way to implement this is probably to add that new logic in the command line
1031 tool only and not in the underlying CURLOPT_FAILONERROR logic.
1032
103318.15 --retry should resume
1034
1035 When --retry is used and curl actually retries transfer, it should use the
1036 already transferred data and do a resumed transfer for the rest (when
1037 possible) so that it doesn't have to transfer the same data again that was
1038 already transferred before the retry.
1039
1040 See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1084
1041
104218.16 send only part of --data
1043
1044 When the user only wants to send a small piece of the data provided with
1045 --data or --data-binary, like when that data is a huge file, consider a way
1046 to specify that curl should only send a piece of that. One suggested syntax
1047 would be: "--data-binary @largefile.zip!1073741823-2147483647".
1048
1049 See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1200
1050
105118.17 consider file name from the redirected URL with -O ?
1052
1053 When a user gives a URL and uses -O, and curl follows a redirect to a new
1054 URL, the file name is not extracted and used from the newly redirected-to URL
1055 even if the new URL may have a much more sensible file name.
1056
1057 This is clearly documented and helps for security since there's no surprise
1058 to users which file name that might get overwritten. But maybe a new option
1059 could allow for this or maybe -J should imply such a treatment as well as -J
1060 already allows for the server to decide what file name to use so it already
1061 provides the "may overwrite any file" risk.
1062
1063 This is extra tricky if the original URL has no file name part at all since
1064 then the current code path will error out with an error message, and we can't
1065 *know* already at that point if curl will be redirected to a URL that has a
1066 file name...
1067
1068 See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1241
1069
107019. Build
1071
107219.1 roffit
1073
1074 Consider extending 'roffit' to produce decent ASCII output, and use that
1075 instead of (g)nroff when building src/tool_hugehelp.c
1076
107719.2 Enable PIE and RELRO by default
1078
1079 Especially when having programs that execute curl via the command line, PIE
1080 renders the exploitation of memory corruption vulnerabilities a lot more
1081 difficult. This can be attributed to the additional information leaks being
1082 required to conduct a successful attack. RELRO, on the other hand, masks
1083 different binary sections like the GOT as read-only and thus kills a handful
1084 of techniques that come in handy when attackers are able to arbitrarily
1085 overwrite memory. A few tests showed that enabling these features had close
1086 to no impact, neither on the performance nor on the general functionality of
1087 curl.
1088
1089
109020. Test suite
1091
109220.1 SSL tunnel
1093
1094 Make our own version of stunnel for simple port forwarding to enable HTTPS
1095 and FTP-SSL tests without the stunnel dependency, and it could allow us to
1096 provide test tools built with either OpenSSL or GnuTLS
1097
109820.2 nicer lacking perl message
1099
1100 If perl wasn't found by the configure script, don't attempt to run the tests
1101 but explain something nice why it doesn't.
1102
110320.3 more protocols supported
1104
1105 Extend the test suite to include more protocols. The telnet could just do FTP
1106 or http operations (for which we have test servers).
1107
110820.4 more platforms supported
1109
1110 Make the test suite work on more platforms. OpenBSD and Mac OS. Remove
1111 fork()s and it should become even more portable.
1112
111320.5 Add support for concurrent connections
1114
1115 Tests 836, 882 and 938 were designed to verify that separate connections aren't
1116 used when using different login credentials in protocols that shouldn't re-use
1117 a connection under such circumstances.
1118
1119 Unfortunately, ftpserver.pl doesn't appear to support multiple concurrent
1120 connections. The read while() loop seems to loop until it receives a disconnect
1121 from the client, where it then enters the waiting for connections loop. When
1122 the client opens a second connection to the server, the first connection hasn't
1123 been dropped (unless it has been forced - which we shouldn't do in these tests)
1124 and thus the wait for connections loop is never entered to receive the second
1125 connection.
1126
112720.6 Use the RFC6265 test suite
1128
1129 A test suite made for HTTP cookies (RFC 6265) by Adam Barth is available at
1130 https://github.com/abarth/http-state/tree/master/tests
1131
1132 It'd be really awesome if someone would write a script/setup that would run
1133 curl with that test suite and detect deviances. Ideally, that would even be
1134 incorporated into our regular test suite.
1135
1136
113721. Next SONAME bump
1138
113921.1 http-style HEAD output for FTP
1140
1141 #undef CURL_FTP_HTTPSTYLE_HEAD in lib/ftp.c to remove the HTTP-style headers
1142 from being output in NOBODY requests over FTP
1143
114421.2 combine error codes
1145
1146 Combine some of the error codes to remove duplicates. The original
1147 numbering should not be changed, and the old identifiers would be
1148 macroed to the new ones in an CURL_NO_OLDIES section to help with
1149 backward compatibility.
1150
1151 Candidates for removal and their replacements:
1152
1153 CURLE_FILE_COULDNT_READ_FILE => CURLE_REMOTE_FILE_NOT_FOUND
1154
1155 CURLE_FTP_COULDNT_RETR_FILE => CURLE_REMOTE_FILE_NOT_FOUND
1156
1157 CURLE_FTP_COULDNT_USE_REST => CURLE_RANGE_ERROR
1158
1159 CURLE_FUNCTION_NOT_FOUND => CURLE_FAILED_INIT
1160
1161 CURLE_LDAP_INVALID_URL => CURLE_URL_MALFORMAT
1162
1163 CURLE_TFTP_NOSUCHUSER => CURLE_TFTP_ILLEGAL
1164
1165 CURLE_TFTP_NOTFOUND => CURLE_REMOTE_FILE_NOT_FOUND
1166
1167 CURLE_TFTP_PERM => CURLE_REMOTE_ACCESS_DENIED
1168
116921.3 extend CURLOPT_SOCKOPTFUNCTION prototype
1170
1171 The current prototype only provides 'purpose' that tells what the
1172 connection/socket is for, but not any protocol or similar. It makes it hard
1173 for applications to differentiate on TCP vs UDP and even HTTP vs FTP and
1174 similar.
1175
117622. Next major release
1177
117822.1 cleanup return codes
1179
1180 curl_easy_cleanup() returns void, but curl_multi_cleanup() returns a
1181 CURLMcode. These should be changed to be the same.
1182
118322.2 remove obsolete defines
1184
1185 remove obsolete defines from curl/curl.h
1186
118722.3 size_t
1188
1189 make several functions use size_t instead of int in their APIs
1190
119122.4 remove several functions
1192
1193 remove the following functions from the public API:
1194
1195 curl_getenv
1196
1197 curl_mprintf (and variations)
1198
1199 curl_strequal
1200
1201 curl_strnequal
1202
1203 They will instead become curlx_ - alternatives. That makes the curl app
1204 still capable of using them, by building with them from source.
1205
1206 These functions have no purpose anymore:
1207
1208 curl_multi_socket
1209
1210 curl_multi_socket_all
1211
121222.5 remove CURLOPT_FAILONERROR
1213
1214 Remove support for CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, it has gotten too kludgy and weird
1215 internally. Let the app judge success or not for itself.
1216
121722.6 remove CURLOPT_DNS_USE_GLOBAL_CACHE
1218
1219 Remove support for a global DNS cache. Anything global is silly, and we
1220 already offer the share interface for the same functionality but done
1221 "right".
1222
122322.7 remove progress meter from libcurl
1224
1225 The internally provided progress meter output doesn't belong in the library.
1226 Basically no application wants it (apart from curl) but instead applications
1227 can and should do their own progress meters using the progress callback.
1228
1229 The progress callback should then be bumped as well to get proper 64bit
1230 variable types passed to it instead of doubles so that big files work
1231 correctly.
1232
123322.8 remove 'curl_httppost' from public
1234
1235 curl_formadd() was made to fill in a public struct, but the fact that the
1236 struct is public is never really used by application for their own advantage
1237 but instead often restricts how the form functions can or can't be modified.
1238
1239 Changing them to return a private handle will benefit the implementation and
1240 allow us much greater freedoms while still maintaining a solid API and ABI.