1: _ _ ____ _
2: ___| | | | _ \| |
3: / __| | | | |_) | |
4: | (__| |_| | _ <| |___
5: \___|\___/|_| \_\_____|
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: 1.1 TFO support on Windows
21: 1.2 Consult %APPDATA% also for .netrc
22: 1.3 struct lifreq
23: 1.4 alt-svc sharing
24: 1.5 get rid of PATH_MAX
25: 1.7 Support HTTP/2 for HTTP(S) proxies
26: 1.8 CURLOPT_RESOLVE for any port number
27: 1.9 Cache negative name resolves
28: 1.10 auto-detect proxy
29: 1.11 minimize dependencies with dynamically loaded modules
30: 1.12 updated DNS server while running
31: 1.13 c-ares and CURLOPT_OPENSOCKETFUNCTION
32: 1.14 Typesafe curl_easy_setopt()
33: 1.15 Monitor connections in the connection pool
34: 1.16 Try to URL encode given URL
35: 1.17 Add support for IRIs
36: 1.18 try next proxy if one doesn't work
37: 1.20 SRV and URI DNS records
38: 1.22 CURLINFO_PAUSE_STATE
39: 1.23 Offer API to flush the connection pool
40: 1.24 TCP Fast Open for windows
41: 1.25 Expose tried IP addresses that failed
42: 1.27 hardcode the "localhost" addresses
43: 1.28 FD_CLOEXEC
44: 1.29 Upgrade to websockets
45: 1.30 config file parsing
46:
47: 2. libcurl - multi interface
48: 2.1 More non-blocking
49: 2.2 Better support for same name resolves
50: 2.3 Non-blocking curl_multi_remove_handle()
51: 2.4 Split connect and authentication process
52: 2.5 Edge-triggered sockets should work
53: 2.6 multi upkeep
54:
55: 3. Documentation
56: 3.2 Provide cmake config-file
57:
58: 4. FTP
59: 4.1 HOST
60: 4.2 Alter passive/active on failure and retry
61: 4.3 Earlier bad letter detection
62: 4.5 ASCII support
63: 4.6 GSSAPI via Windows SSPI
64: 4.7 STAT for LIST without data connection
65: 4.8 Option to ignore private IP addresses in PASV response
66:
67: 5. HTTP
68: 5.1 Better persistency for HTTP 1.0
69: 5.2 Set custom client ip when using haproxy protocol
70: 5.3 Rearrange request header order
71: 5.4 Allow SAN names in HTTP/2 server push
72: 5.5 auth= in URLs
73:
74: 6. TELNET
75: 6.1 ditch stdin
76: 6.2 ditch telnet-specific select
77: 6.3 feature negotiation debug data
78:
79: 7. SMTP
80: 7.2 Enhanced capability support
81: 7.3 Add CURLOPT_MAIL_CLIENT option
82:
83: 8. POP3
84: 8.2 Enhanced capability support
85:
86: 9. IMAP
87: 9.1 Enhanced capability support
88:
89: 10. LDAP
90: 10.1 SASL based authentication mechanisms
91: 10.2 CURLOPT_SSL_CTX_FUNCTION for LDAPS
92: 10.3 Paged searches on LDAP server
93:
94: 11. SMB
95: 11.1 File listing support
96: 11.2 Honor file timestamps
97: 11.3 Use NTLMv2
98: 11.4 Create remote directories
99:
100: 12. New protocols
101:
102: 13. SSL
103: 13.1 TLS-PSK with OpenSSL
104: 13.2 Provide mutex locking API
105: 13.3 Support in-memory certs/ca certs/keys
106: 13.4 Cache/share OpenSSL contexts
107: 13.5 Export session ids
108: 13.6 Provide callback for cert verification
109: 13.7 improve configure --with-ssl
110: 13.8 Support DANE
111: 13.10 Support Authority Information Access certificate extension (AIA)
112: 13.11 Support intermediate & root pinning for PINNEDPUBLICKEY
113: 13.12 Support HSTS
114: 13.14 Support the clienthello extension
115:
116: 14. GnuTLS
117: 14.2 check connection
118:
119: 15. WinSSL/SChannel
120: 15.1 Add support for client certificate authentication
121: 15.3 Add support for the --ciphers option
122: 15.4 Add option to disable client certificate auto-send
123:
124: 16. SASL
125: 16.1 Other authentication mechanisms
126: 16.2 Add QOP support to GSSAPI authentication
127: 16.3 Support binary messages (i.e.: non-base64)
128:
129: 17. SSH protocols
130: 17.1 Multiplexing
131: 17.2 Handle growing SFTP files
132: 17.3 Support better than MD5 hostkey hash
133: 17.4 Support CURLOPT_PREQUOTE
134:
135: 18. Command line tool
136: 18.1 sync
137: 18.2 glob posts
138: 18.3 prevent file overwriting
139: 18.4 --proxycommand
140: 18.5 UTF-8 filenames in Content-Disposition
141: 18.6 Option to make -Z merge lined based outputs on stdout
142: 18.7 at least N milliseconds between requests
143: 18.8 Consider convenience options for JSON and XML?
144: 18.9 Choose the name of file in braces for complex URLs
145: 18.10 improve how curl works in a windows console window
146: 18.11 Windows: set attribute 'archive' for completed downloads
147: 18.12 keep running, read instructions from pipe/socket
148: 18.15 --retry should resume
149: 18.16 send only part of --data
150: 18.17 consider file name from the redirected URL with -O ?
151: 18.18 retry on network is unreachable
152: 18.19 expand ~/ in config files
153: 18.20 host name sections in config files
154:
155: 19. Build
156: 19.1 roffit
157: 19.2 Enable PIE and RELRO by default
158: 19.3 cmake test suite improvements
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: 20.7 Support LD_PRELOAD on macOS
168: 20.8 Run web-platform-tests url tests
169: 20.9 Use "random" ports for the test servers
170:
171: 21. Next SONAME bump
172: 21.1 http-style HEAD output for FTP
173: 21.2 combine error codes
174: 21.3 extend CURLOPT_SOCKOPTFUNCTION prototype
175:
176: 22. Next major release
177: 22.1 cleanup return codes
178: 22.2 remove obsolete defines
179: 22.3 size_t
180: 22.4 remove several functions
181: 22.5 remove CURLOPT_FAILONERROR
182: 22.7 remove progress meter from libcurl
183: 22.8 remove 'curl_httppost' from public
184:
185: ==============================================================================
186:
187: 1. libcurl
188:
189: 1.1 TFO support on Windows
190:
191: TCP Fast Open is supported on several platforms but not on Windows. Work on
192: this was once started but never finished.
193:
194: See https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/3378
195:
196: 1.2 Consult %APPDATA% also for .netrc
197:
198: %APPDATA%\.netrc is not considered when running on Windows. Shouldn't it?
199:
200: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4016
201:
202: 1.3 struct lifreq
203:
204: Use 'struct lifreq' and SIOCGLIFADDR instead of 'struct ifreq' and
205: SIOCGIFADDR on newer Solaris versions as they claim the latter is obsolete.
206: To support IPv6 interface addresses for network interfaces properly.
207:
208: 1.4 alt-svc sharing
209:
210: The share interface could benefit from allowing the alt-svc cache to be
211: possible to share between easy handles.
212:
213: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4476
214:
215: 1.5 get rid of PATH_MAX
216:
217: Having code use and rely on PATH_MAX is not nice:
218: https://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2007/11/pathmax-simply-isnt.html
219:
220: Currently the libssh2 SSH based code uses it, but to remove PATH_MAX from
221: there we need libssh2 to properly tell us when we pass in a too small buffer
222: and its current API (as of libssh2 1.2.7) doesn't.
223:
224: 1.7 Support HTTP/2 for HTTP(S) proxies
225:
226: Support for doing HTTP/2 to HTTP and HTTPS proxies is still missing.
227:
228: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3570
229:
230: 1.8 CURLOPT_RESOLVE for any port number
231:
232: This option allows applications to set a replacement IP address for a given
233: host + port pair. Consider making support for providing a replacement address
234: for the host name on all port numbers.
235:
236: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1264
237:
238: 1.9 Cache negative name resolves
239:
240: A name resolve that has failed is likely to fail when made again within a
241: short period of time. Currently we only cache positive responses.
242:
243: 1.10 auto-detect proxy
244:
245: libcurl could be made to detect the system proxy setup automatically and use
246: that. On Windows, macOS and Linux desktops for example.
247:
248: The pull-request to use libproxy for this was deferred due to doubts on the
249: reliability of the dependency and how to use it:
250: https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/977
251:
252: libdetectproxy is a (C++) library for detecting the proxy on Windows
253: https://github.com/paulharris/libdetectproxy
254:
255: 1.11 minimize dependencies with dynamically loaded modules
256:
257: We can create a system with loadable modules/plug-ins, where these modules
258: would be the ones that link to 3rd party libs. That would allow us to avoid
259: having to load ALL dependencies since only the necessary ones for this
260: app/invoke/used protocols would be necessary to load. See
261: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/349
262:
263: 1.12 updated DNS server while running
264:
265: If /etc/resolv.conf gets updated while a program using libcurl is running, it
266: is may cause name resolves to fail unless res_init() is called. We should
267: consider calling res_init() + retry once unconditionally on all name resolve
268: failures to mitigate against this. Firefox works like that. Note that Windows
269: doesn't have res_init() or an alternative.
270:
271: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2251
272:
273: 1.13 c-ares and CURLOPT_OPENSOCKETFUNCTION
274:
275: curl will create most sockets via the CURLOPT_OPENSOCKETFUNCTION callback and
276: close them with the CURLOPT_CLOSESOCKETFUNCTION callback. However, c-ares
277: does not use those functions and instead opens and closes the sockets
278: itself. This means that when curl passes the c-ares socket to the
279: CURLMOPT_SOCKETFUNCTION it isn't owned by the application like other sockets.
280:
281: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2734
282:
283: 1.14 Typesafe curl_easy_setopt()
284:
285: One of the most common problems in libcurl using applications is the lack of
286: type checks for curl_easy_setopt() which happens because it accepts varargs
287: and thus can take any type.
288:
289: One possible solution to this is to introduce a few different versions of the
290: setopt version for the different kinds of data you can set.
291:
292: curl_easy_set_num() - sets a long value
293:
294: curl_easy_set_large() - sets a curl_off_t value
295:
296: curl_easy_set_ptr() - sets a pointer
297:
298: curl_easy_set_cb() - sets a callback PLUS its callback data
299:
300: 1.15 Monitor connections in the connection pool
301:
302: libcurl's connection cache or pool holds a number of open connections for the
303: purpose of possible subsequent connection reuse. It may contain a few up to a
304: significant amount of connections. Currently, libcurl leaves all connections
305: as they are and first when a connection is iterated over for matching or
306: reuse purpose it is verified that it is still alive.
307:
308: Those connections may get closed by the server side for idleness or they may
309: get a HTTP/2 ping from the peer to verify that they're still alive. By adding
310: monitoring of the connections while in the pool, libcurl can detect dead
311: connections (and close them) better and earlier, and it can handle HTTP/2
312: pings to keep such ones alive even when not actively doing transfers on them.
313:
314: 1.16 Try to URL encode given URL
315:
316: Given a URL that for example contains spaces, libcurl could have an option
317: that would try somewhat harder than it does now and convert spaces to %20 and
318: perhaps URL encoded byte values over 128 etc (basically do what the redirect
319: following code already does).
320:
321: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/514
322:
323: 1.17 Add support for IRIs
324:
325: IRIs (RFC 3987) allow localized, non-ascii, names in the URL. To properly
326: support this, curl/libcurl would need to translate/encode the given input
327: from the input string encoding into percent encoded output "over the wire".
328:
329: To make that work smoothly for curl users even on Windows, curl would
330: probably need to be able to convert from several input encodings.
331:
332: 1.18 try next proxy if one doesn't work
333:
334: Allow an application to specify a list of proxies to try, and failing to
335: connect to the first go on and try the next instead until the list is
336: exhausted. Browsers support this feature at least when they specify proxies
337: using PACs.
338:
339: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/896
340:
341: 1.20 SRV and URI DNS records
342:
343: Offer support for resolving SRV and URI DNS records for libcurl to know which
344: server to connect to for various protocols (including HTTP!).
345:
346: 1.22 CURLINFO_PAUSE_STATE
347:
348: Return information about the transfer's current pause state, in both
349: directions. https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2588
350:
351: 1.23 Offer API to flush the connection pool
352:
353: Sometimes applications want to flush all the existing connections kept alive.
354: An API could allow a forced flush or just a forced loop that would properly
355: close all connections that have been closed by the server already.
356:
357: 1.24 TCP Fast Open for windows
358:
359: libcurl supports the CURLOPT_TCP_FASTOPEN option since 7.49.0 for Linux and
360: Mac OS. Windows supports TCP Fast Open starting with Windows 10, version 1607
361: and we should add support for it.
362:
363: 1.25 Expose tried IP addresses that failed
364:
365: When libcurl fails to connect to a host, it should be able to offer the
366: application the list of IP addresses that were used in the attempt.
367:
368: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2126
369:
370: 1.27 hardcode the "localhost" addresses
371:
372: There's this new spec getting adopted that says "localhost" should always and
373: unconditionally be a local address and not get resolved by a DNS server. A
374: fine way for curl to fix this would be to simply hard-code the response to
375: 127.0.0.1 and/or ::1 (depending on what IP versions that are requested). This
376: is what the browsers probably will do with this hostname.
377:
378: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1220810
379:
380: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dnsop-let-localhost-be-localhost-02
381:
382: 1.28 FD_CLOEXEC
383:
384: It sets the close-on-exec flag for the file descriptor, which causes the file
385: descriptor to be automatically (and atomically) closed when any of the
386: exec-family functions succeed. Should probably be set by default?
387:
388: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2252
389:
390: 1.29 Upgrade to websockets
391:
392: libcurl could offer a smoother path to get to a websocket connection.
393: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3523
394:
395: Michael Kaufmann suggestion here:
396: https://curl.haxx.se/video/curlup-2017/2017-03-19_05_Michael_Kaufmann_Websocket_support_for_curl.mp4
397:
398: 1.30 config file parsing
399:
400: Consider providing an API, possibly in a separate companion library, for
401: parsing a config file like curl's -K/--config option to allow applications to
402: get the same ability to read curl options from files.
403:
404: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3698
405:
406: 2. libcurl - multi interface
407:
408: 2.1 More non-blocking
409:
410: Make sure we don't ever loop because of non-blocking sockets returning
411: EWOULDBLOCK or similar. Blocking cases include:
412:
413: - Name resolves on non-windows unless c-ares or the threaded resolver is used.
414:
415: - The threaded resolver may block on cleanup:
416: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4852
417:
418: - file:// transfers
419:
420: - TELNET transfers
421:
422: - GSSAPI authentication for FTP transfers
423:
424: - The "DONE" operation (post transfer protocol-specific actions) for the
425: protocols SFTP, SMTP, FTP. Fixing Curl_done() for this is a worthy task.
426:
427: - curl_multi_remove_handle for any of the above. See section 2.3.
428:
429: 2.2 Better support for same name resolves
430:
431: If a name resolve has been initiated for name NN and a second easy handle
432: wants to resolve that name as well, make it wait for the first resolve to end
433: up in the cache instead of doing a second separate resolve. This is
434: especially needed when adding many simultaneous handles using the same host
435: name when the DNS resolver can get flooded.
436:
437: 2.3 Non-blocking curl_multi_remove_handle()
438:
439: The multi interface has a few API calls that assume a blocking behavior, like
440: add_handle() and remove_handle() which limits what we can do internally. The
441: multi API need to be moved even more into a single function that "drives"
442: everything in a non-blocking manner and signals when something is done. A
443: remove or add would then only ask for the action to get started and then
444: multi_perform() etc still be called until the add/remove is completed.
445:
446: 2.4 Split connect and authentication process
447:
448: The multi interface treats the authentication process as part of the connect
449: phase. As such any failures during authentication won't trigger the relevant
450: QUIT or LOGOFF for protocols such as IMAP, POP3 and SMTP.
451:
452: 2.5 Edge-triggered sockets should work
453:
454: The multi_socket API should work with edge-triggered socket events. One of
455: the internal actions that need to be improved for this to work perfectly is
456: the 'maxloops' handling in transfer.c:readwrite_data().
457:
458: 2.6 multi upkeep
459:
460: In libcurl 7.62.0 we introduced curl_easy_upkeep. It unfortunately only works
461: on easy handles. We should introduces a version of that for the multi handle,
462: and also consider doing "upkeep" automatically on connections in the
463: connection pool when the multi handle is in used.
464:
465: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3199
466:
467: 3. Documentation
468:
469: 3.2 Provide cmake config-file
470:
471: A config-file package is a set of files provided by us to allow applications
472: to write cmake scripts to find and use libcurl easier. See
473: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/885
474:
475: 4. FTP
476:
477: 4.1 HOST
478:
479: HOST is a command for a client to tell which host name to use, to offer FTP
480: servers named-based virtual hosting:
481:
482: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7151
483:
484: 4.2 Alter passive/active on failure and retry
485:
486: When trying to connect passively to a server which only supports active
487: connections, libcurl returns CURLE_FTP_WEIRD_PASV_REPLY and closes the
488: connection. There could be a way to fallback to an active connection (and
489: vice versa). https://curl.haxx.se/bug/feature.cgi?id=1754793
490:
491: 4.3 Earlier bad letter detection
492:
493: Make the detection of (bad) %0d and %0a codes in FTP URL parts earlier in the
494: process to avoid doing a resolve and connect in vain.
495:
496: 4.5 ASCII support
497:
498: FTP ASCII transfers do not follow RFC959. They don't convert the data
499: accordingly.
500:
501: 4.6 GSSAPI via Windows SSPI
502:
503: In addition to currently supporting the SASL GSSAPI mechanism (Kerberos V5)
504: via third-party GSS-API libraries, such as Heimdal or MIT Kerberos, also add
505: support for GSSAPI authentication via Windows SSPI.
506:
507: 4.7 STAT for LIST without data connection
508:
509: Some FTP servers allow STAT for listing directories instead of using LIST,
510: and the response is then sent over the control connection instead of as the
511: otherwise usedw data connection: https://www.nsftools.com/tips/RawFTP.htm#STAT
512:
513: This is not detailed in any FTP specification.
514:
515: 4.8 Option to ignore private IP addresses in PASV response
516:
517: Some servers respond with and some other FTP client implementations can
518: ignore private (RFC 1918 style) IP addresses when received in PASV responses.
519: To consider for libcurl as well. See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1455
520:
521: 5. HTTP
522:
523: 5.1 Better persistency for HTTP 1.0
524:
525: "Better" support for persistent connections over HTTP 1.0
526: https://curl.haxx.se/bug/feature.cgi?id=1089001
527:
528: 5.2 Set custom client ip when using haproxy protocol
529:
530: This would allow testing servers with different client ip addresses (without
531: using x-forward-for header).
532:
533: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5125
534:
535: 5.3 Rearrange request header order
536:
537: Server implementors often make an effort to detect browser and to reject
538: clients it can detect to not match. One of the last details we cannot yet
539: control in libcurl's HTTP requests, which also can be exploited to detect
540: that libcurl is in fact used even when it tries to impersonate a browser, is
541: the order of the request headers. I propose that we introduce a new option in
542: which you give headers a value, and then when the HTTP request is built it
543: sorts the headers based on that number. We could then have internally created
544: headers use a default value so only headers that need to be moved have to be
545: specified.
546:
547: 5.4 Allow SAN names in HTTP/2 server push
548:
549: curl only allows HTTP/2 push promise if the provided :authority header value
550: exactly matches the host name given in the URL. It could be extended to allow
551: any name that would match the Subject Alternative Names in the server's TLS
552: certificate.
553:
554: See https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/3581
555:
556: 5.5 auth= in URLs
557:
558: Add the ability to specify the preferred authentication mechanism to use by
559: using ;auth=<mech> in the login part of the URL.
560:
561: For example:
562:
563: http://test:pass;auth=NTLM@example.com would be equivalent to specifying
564: --user test:pass;auth=NTLM or --user test:pass --ntlm from the command line.
565:
566: Additionally this should be implemented for proxy base URLs as well.
567:
568:
569: 6. TELNET
570:
571: 6.1 ditch stdin
572:
573: Reading input (to send to the remote server) on stdin is a crappy solution
574: for library purposes. We need to invent a good way for the application to be
575: able to provide the data to send.
576:
577: 6.2 ditch telnet-specific select
578:
579: Move the telnet support's network select() loop go away and merge the code
580: into the main transfer loop. Until this is done, the multi interface won't
581: work for telnet.
582:
583: 6.3 feature negotiation debug data
584:
585: Add telnet feature negotiation data to the debug callback as header data.
586:
587:
588: 7. SMTP
589:
590: 7.2 Enhanced capability support
591:
592: Add the ability, for an application that uses libcurl, to obtain the list of
593: capabilities returned from the EHLO command.
594:
595: 7.3 Add CURLOPT_MAIL_CLIENT option
596:
597: Rather than use the URL to specify the mail client string to present in the
598: HELO and EHLO commands, libcurl should support a new CURLOPT specifically for
599: specifying this data as the URL is non-standard and to be honest a bit of a
600: hack ;-)
601:
602: Please see the following thread for more information:
603: https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2012-05/0178.html
604:
605:
606: 8. POP3
607:
608: 8.2 Enhanced capability support
609:
610: Add the ability, for an application that uses libcurl, to obtain the list of
611: capabilities returned from the CAPA command.
612:
613: 9. IMAP
614:
615: 9.1 Enhanced capability support
616:
617: Add the ability, for an application that uses libcurl, to obtain the list of
618: capabilities returned from the CAPABILITY command.
619:
620: 10. LDAP
621:
622: 10.1 SASL based authentication mechanisms
623:
624: Currently the LDAP module only supports ldap_simple_bind_s() in order to bind
625: to an LDAP server. However, this function sends username and password details
626: using the simple authentication mechanism (as clear text). However, it should
627: be possible to use ldap_bind_s() instead specifying the security context
628: information ourselves.
629:
630: 10.2 CURLOPT_SSL_CTX_FUNCTION for LDAPS
631:
632: CURLOPT_SSL_CTX_FUNCTION works perfectly for HTTPS and email protocols, but
633: it has no effect for LDAPS connections.
634:
635: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4108
636:
637: 10.3 Paged searches on LDAP server
638:
639: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4452
640:
641: 11. SMB
642:
643: 11.1 File listing support
644:
645: Add support for listing the contents of a SMB share. The output should probably
646: be the same as/similar to FTP.
647:
648: 11.2 Honor file timestamps
649:
650: The timestamp of the transferred file should reflect that of the original file.
651:
652: 11.3 Use NTLMv2
653:
654: Currently the SMB authentication uses NTLMv1.
655:
656: 11.4 Create remote directories
657:
658: Support for creating remote directories when uploading a file to a directory
659: that doesn't exist on the server, just like --ftp-create-dirs.
660:
661: 12. New protocols
662:
663: 13. SSL
664:
665: 13.1 TLS-PSK with OpenSSL
666:
667: Transport Layer Security pre-shared key ciphersuites (TLS-PSK) is a set of
668: cryptographic protocols that provide secure communication based on pre-shared
669: keys (PSKs). These pre-shared keys are symmetric keys shared in advance among
670: the communicating parties.
671:
672: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5081
673:
674: 13.2 Provide mutex locking API
675:
676: Provide a libcurl API for setting mutex callbacks in the underlying SSL
677: library, so that the same application code can use mutex-locking
678: independently of OpenSSL or GnutTLS being used.
679:
680: 13.3 Support in-memory certs/ca certs/keys
681:
682: You can specify the private and public keys for SSH/SSL as file paths. Some
683: programs want to avoid using files and instead just pass them as in-memory
684: data blobs. There's probably a challenge to make this work across the
685: plethory of different TLS and SSH backends that curl supports.
686: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2310
687:
688: 13.4 Cache/share OpenSSL contexts
689:
690: "Look at SSL cafile - quick traces look to me like these are done on every
691: request as well, when they should only be necessary once per SSL context (or
692: once per handle)". The major improvement we can rather easily do is to make
693: sure we don't create and kill a new SSL "context" for every request, but
694: instead make one for every connection and re-use that SSL context in the same
695: style connections are re-used. It will make us use slightly more memory but
696: it will libcurl do less creations and deletions of SSL contexts.
697:
698: Technically, the "caching" is probably best implemented by getting added to
699: the share interface so that easy handles who want to and can reuse the
700: context specify that by sharing with the right properties set.
701:
702: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1110
703:
704: 13.5 Export session ids
705:
706: Add an interface to libcurl that enables "session IDs" to get
707: exported/imported. Cris Bailiff said: "OpenSSL has functions which can
708: serialise the current SSL state to a buffer of your choice, and recover/reset
709: the state from such a buffer at a later date - this is used by mod_ssl for
710: apache to implement and SSL session ID cache".
711:
712: 13.6 Provide callback for cert verification
713:
714: OpenSSL supports a callback for customised verification of the peer
715: certificate, but this doesn't seem to be exposed in the libcurl APIs. Could
716: it be? There's so much that could be done if it were!
717:
718: 13.7 improve configure --with-ssl
719:
720: make the configure --with-ssl option first check for OpenSSL, then GnuTLS,
721: then NSS...
722:
723: 13.8 Support DANE
724:
725: DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) is a way to provide SSL
726: keys and certs over DNS using DNSSEC as an alternative to the CA model.
727: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6698.txt
728:
729: An initial patch was posted by Suresh Krishnaswamy on March 7th 2013
730: (https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2013-03/0075.html) but it was a too simple
731: approach. See Daniel's comments:
732: https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2013-03/0103.html . libunbound may be the
733: correct library to base this development on.
734:
735: Björn Stenberg wrote a separate initial take on DANE that was never
736: completed.
737:
738: 13.10 Support Authority Information Access certificate extension (AIA)
739:
740: AIA can provide various things like CRLs but more importantly information
741: about intermediate CA certificates that can allow validation path to be
742: fulfilled when the HTTPS server doesn't itself provide them.
743:
744: Since AIA is about downloading certs on demand to complete a TLS handshake,
745: it is probably a bit tricky to get done right.
746:
747: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2793
748:
749: 13.11 Support intermediate & root pinning for PINNEDPUBLICKEY
750:
751: CURLOPT_PINNEDPUBLICKEY does not consider the hashes of intermediate & root
752: certificates when comparing the pinned keys. Therefore it is not compatible
753: with "HTTP Public Key Pinning" as there also intermediate and root certificates
754: can be pinned. This is very useful as it prevents webadmins from "locking
755: themself out of their servers".
756:
757: Adding this feature would make curls pinning 100% compatible to HPKP and allow
758: more flexible pinning.
759:
760: 13.12 Support HSTS
761:
762: "HTTP Strict Transport Security" is TOFU (trust on first use), time-based
763: features indicated by a HTTP header send by the webserver. It is widely used
764: in browsers and it's purpose is to prevent insecure HTTP connections after
765: a previous HTTPS connection. It protects against SSLStripping attacks.
766:
767: Doc: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/HTTP_strict_transport_security
768: RFC 6797: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6797
769:
770: 13.14 Support the clienthello extension
771:
772: Certain stupid networks and middle boxes have a problem with SSL handshake
773: pakets that are within a certain size range because how that sets some bits
774: that previously (in older TLS version) were not set. The clienthello
775: extension adds padding to avoid that size range.
776:
777: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7685
778: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2299
779:
780: 14. GnuTLS
781:
782: 14.2 check connection
783:
784: Add a way to check if the connection seems to be alive, to correspond to the
785: SSL_peak() way we use with OpenSSL.
786:
787: 15. WinSSL/SChannel
788:
789: 15.1 Add support for client certificate authentication
790:
791: WinSSL/SChannel currently makes use of the OS-level system and user
792: certificate and private key stores. This does not allow the application
793: or the user to supply a custom client certificate using curl or libcurl.
794:
795: Therefore support for the existing -E/--cert and --key options should be
796: implemented by supplying a custom certificate to the SChannel APIs, see:
797: - Getting a Certificate for Schannel
798: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa375447.aspx
799:
800: 15.3 Add support for the --ciphers option
801:
802: The cipher suites used by WinSSL/SChannel are configured on an OS-level
803: instead of an application-level. This does not allow the application or
804: the user to customize the configured cipher suites using curl or libcurl.
805:
806: Therefore support for the existing --ciphers option should be implemented
807: by mapping the OpenSSL/GnuTLS cipher suites to the SChannel APIs, see
808: - Specifying Schannel Ciphers and Cipher Strengths
809: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa380161.aspx
810:
811: 15.4 Add option to disable client certificate auto-send
812:
813: Microsoft says "By default, Schannel will, with no notification to the client,
814: attempt to locate a client certificate and send it to the server." That could
815: be considered a privacy violation and unexpected.
816:
817: Some Windows users have come to expect that default behavior and to change the
818: default to make it consistent with other SSL backends would be a breaking
819: change. An option should be added that can be used to disable the default
820: Schannel auto-send behavior.
821:
822: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2262
823:
824: 16. SASL
825:
826: 16.1 Other authentication mechanisms
827:
828: Add support for other authentication mechanisms such as OLP,
829: GSS-SPNEGO and others.
830:
831: 16.2 Add QOP support to GSSAPI authentication
832:
833: Currently the GSSAPI authentication only supports the default QOP of auth
834: (Authentication), whilst Kerberos V5 supports both auth-int (Authentication
835: with integrity protection) and auth-conf (Authentication with integrity and
836: privacy protection).
837:
838: 16.3 Support binary messages (i.e.: non-base64)
839:
840: Mandatory to support LDAP SASL authentication.
841:
842:
843: 17. SSH protocols
844:
845: 17.1 Multiplexing
846:
847: SSH is a perfectly fine multiplexed protocols which would allow libcurl to do
848: multiple parallel transfers from the same host using the same connection,
849: much in the same spirit as HTTP/2 does. libcurl however does not take
850: advantage of that ability but will instead always create a new connection for
851: new transfers even if an existing connection already exists to the host.
852:
853: To fix this, libcurl would have to detect an existing connection and "attach"
854: the new transfer to the existing one.
855:
856: 17.2 Handle growing SFTP files
857:
858: The SFTP code in libcurl checks the file size *before* a transfer starts and
859: then proceeds to transfer exactly that amount of data. If the remote file
860: grows while the transfer is in progress libcurl won't notice and will not
861: adapt. The OpenSSH SFTP command line tool does and libcurl could also just
862: attempt to download more to see if there is more to get...
863:
864: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4344
865:
866: 17.3 Support better than MD5 hostkey hash
867:
868: libcurl offers the CURLOPT_SSH_HOST_PUBLIC_KEY_MD5 option for verifying the
869: server's key. MD5 is generally being deprecated so we should implement
870: support for stronger hashing algorithms. libssh2 itself is what provides this
871: underlying functionality and it supports at least SHA-1 as an alternative.
872: SHA-1 is also being deprecated these days so we should consider working with
873: libssh2 to instead offer support for SHA-256 or similar.
874:
875: 17.4 Support CURLOPT_PREQUOTE
876:
877: The two other QUOTE options are supported for SFTP, but this was left out for
878: unknown reasons!
879:
880: 18. Command line tool
881:
882: 18.1 sync
883:
884: "curl --sync http://example.com/feed[1-100].rss" or
885: "curl --sync http://example.net/{index,calendar,history}.html"
886:
887: Downloads a range or set of URLs using the remote name, but only if the
888: remote file is newer than the local file. A Last-Modified HTTP date header
889: should also be used to set the mod date on the downloaded file.
890:
891: 18.2 glob posts
892:
893: Globbing support for -d and -F, as in 'curl -d "name=foo[0-9]" URL'.
894: This is easily scripted though.
895:
896: 18.3 prevent file overwriting
897:
898: Add an option that prevents curl from overwriting existing local files. When
899: used, and there already is an existing file with the target file name
900: (either -O or -o), a number should be appended (and increased if already
901: existing). So that index.html becomes first index.html.1 and then
902: index.html.2 etc.
903:
904: 18.4 --proxycommand
905:
906: Allow the user to make curl run a command and use its stdio to make requests
907: and not do any network connection by itself. Example:
908:
909: curl --proxycommand 'ssh pi@raspberrypi.local -W 10.1.1.75 80' \
910: http://some/otherwise/unavailable/service.php
911:
912: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4941
913:
914: 18.5 UTF-8 filenames in Content-Disposition
915:
916: RFC 6266 documents how UTF-8 names can be passed to a client in the
917: Content-Disposition header, and curl does not support this.
918:
919: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1888
920:
921: 18.6 Option to make -Z merge lined based outputs on stdout
922:
923: When a user requests multiple lined based files using -Z and sends them to
924: stdout, curl will not "merge" and send complete lines fine but may very well
925: send partial lines from several sources.
926:
927: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5175
928:
929: 18.7 at least N milliseconds between requests
930:
931: Allow curl command lines issue a lot of request against services that limit
932: users to no more than N requests/second or similar. Could be implemented with
933: an option asking that at least a certain time has elapsed since the previous
934: request before the next one will be performed. Example:
935:
936: $ curl "https://example.com/api?input=[1-1000]" -d yadayada --after 500
937:
938: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3920
939:
940: 18.8 Consider convenience options for JSON and XML?
941:
942: Could we add `--xml` or `--json` to add headers needed to call rest API:
943:
944: `--xml` adds -H 'Content-Type: application/xml' -H "Accept: application/xml" and
945: `--json` adds -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H "Accept: application/json"
946:
947: Setting Content-Type when doing a GET or any other method without a body
948: would be a bit strange I think - so maybe only add CT for requests with body?
949: Maybe plain `--xml` and ` --json` are a bit too brief and generic. Maybe
950: `--http-json` etc?
951:
952: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5203
953:
954: 18.9 Choose the name of file in braces for complex URLs
955:
956: When using braces to download a list of URLs and you use complicated names
957: in the list of alternatives, it could be handy to allow curl to use other
958: names when saving.
959:
960: Consider a way to offer that. Possibly like
961: {partURL1:name1,partURL2:name2,partURL3:name3} where the name following the
962: colon is the output name.
963:
964: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/221
965:
966: 18.10 improve how curl works in a windows console window
967:
968: If you pull the scrollbar when transferring with curl in a Windows console
969: window, the transfer is interrupted and can get disconnected. This can
970: probably be improved. See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/322
971:
972: 18.11 Windows: set attribute 'archive' for completed downloads
973:
974: The archive bit (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ARCHIVE, 0x20) separates files that shall be
975: backed up from those that are either not ready or have not changed.
976:
977: Downloads in progress are neither ready to be backed up, nor should they be
978: opened by a different process. Only after a download has been completed it's
979: sensible to include it in any integer snapshot or backup of the system.
980:
981: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3354
982:
983: 18.12 keep running, read instructions from pipe/socket
984:
985: Provide an option that makes curl not exit after the last URL (or even work
986: without a given URL), and then make it read instructions passed on a pipe or
987: over a socket to make further instructions so that a second subsequent curl
988: invoke can talk to the still running instance and ask for transfers to get
989: done, and thus maintain its connection pool, DNS cache and more.
990:
991: 18.15 --retry should resume
992:
993: When --retry is used and curl actually retries transfer, it should use the
994: already transferred data and do a resumed transfer for the rest (when
995: possible) so that it doesn't have to transfer the same data again that was
996: already transferred before the retry.
997:
998: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1084
999:
1000: 18.16 send only part of --data
1001:
1002: When the user only wants to send a small piece of the data provided with
1003: --data or --data-binary, like when that data is a huge file, consider a way
1004: to specify that curl should only send a piece of that. One suggested syntax
1005: would be: "--data-binary @largefile.zip!1073741823-2147483647".
1006:
1007: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1200
1008:
1009: 18.17 consider file name from the redirected URL with -O ?
1010:
1011: When a user gives a URL and uses -O, and curl follows a redirect to a new
1012: URL, the file name is not extracted and used from the newly redirected-to URL
1013: even if the new URL may have a much more sensible file name.
1014:
1015: This is clearly documented and helps for security since there's no surprise
1016: to users which file name that might get overwritten. But maybe a new option
1017: could allow for this or maybe -J should imply such a treatment as well as -J
1018: already allows for the server to decide what file name to use so it already
1019: provides the "may overwrite any file" risk.
1020:
1021: This is extra tricky if the original URL has no file name part at all since
1022: then the current code path will error out with an error message, and we can't
1023: *know* already at that point if curl will be redirected to a URL that has a
1024: file name...
1025:
1026: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1241
1027:
1028: 18.18 retry on network is unreachable
1029:
1030: The --retry option retries transfers on "transient failures". We later added
1031: --retry-connrefused to also retry for "connection refused" errors.
1032:
1033: Suggestions have been brought to also allow retry on "network is unreachable"
1034: errors and while totally reasonable, maybe we should consider a way to make
1035: this more configurable than to add a new option for every new error people
1036: want to retry for?
1037:
1038: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1603
1039:
1040: 18.19 expand ~/ in config files
1041:
1042: For example .curlrc could benefit from being able to do this.
1043:
1044: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2317
1045:
1046: 18.20 host name sections in config files
1047:
1048: config files would be more powerful if they could set different
1049: configurations depending on used URLs, host name or possibly origin. Then a
1050: default .curlrc could a specific user-agent only when doing requests against
1051: a certain site.
1052:
1053:
1054: 19. Build
1055:
1056: 19.1 roffit
1057:
1058: Consider extending 'roffit' to produce decent ASCII output, and use that
1059: instead of (g)nroff when building src/tool_hugehelp.c
1060:
1061: 19.2 Enable PIE and RELRO by default
1062:
1063: Especially when having programs that execute curl via the command line, PIE
1064: renders the exploitation of memory corruption vulnerabilities a lot more
1065: difficult. This can be attributed to the additional information leaks being
1066: required to conduct a successful attack. RELRO, on the other hand, masks
1067: different binary sections like the GOT as read-only and thus kills a handful
1068: of techniques that come in handy when attackers are able to arbitrarily
1069: overwrite memory. A few tests showed that enabling these features had close
1070: to no impact, neither on the performance nor on the general functionality of
1071: curl.
1072:
1073: 19.3 cmake test suite improvements
1074:
1075: The cmake build doesn't support 'make show' so it doesn't know which tests
1076: are in the makefile or not (making appveyor builds do many false warnings
1077: about it) nor does it support running the test suite if building out-of-tree.
1078:
1079: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3109
1080:
1081: 20. Test suite
1082:
1083: 20.1 SSL tunnel
1084:
1085: Make our own version of stunnel for simple port forwarding to enable HTTPS
1086: and FTP-SSL tests without the stunnel dependency, and it could allow us to
1087: provide test tools built with either OpenSSL or GnuTLS
1088:
1089: 20.2 nicer lacking perl message
1090:
1091: If perl wasn't found by the configure script, don't attempt to run the tests
1092: but explain something nice why it doesn't.
1093:
1094: 20.3 more protocols supported
1095:
1096: Extend the test suite to include more protocols. The telnet could just do FTP
1097: or http operations (for which we have test servers).
1098:
1099: 20.4 more platforms supported
1100:
1101: Make the test suite work on more platforms. OpenBSD and Mac OS. Remove
1102: fork()s and it should become even more portable.
1103:
1104: 20.5 Add support for concurrent connections
1105:
1106: Tests 836, 882 and 938 were designed to verify that separate connections
1107: aren't used when using different login credentials in protocols that
1108: shouldn't re-use a connection under such circumstances.
1109:
1110: Unfortunately, ftpserver.pl doesn't appear to support multiple concurrent
1111: connections. The read while() loop seems to loop until it receives a
1112: disconnect from the client, where it then enters the waiting for connections
1113: loop. When the client opens a second connection to the server, the first
1114: connection hasn't been dropped (unless it has been forced - which we
1115: shouldn't do in these tests) and thus the wait for connections loop is never
1116: entered to receive the second connection.
1117:
1118: 20.6 Use the RFC6265 test suite
1119:
1120: A test suite made for HTTP cookies (RFC 6265) by Adam Barth is available at
1121: https://github.com/abarth/http-state/tree/master/tests
1122:
1123: It'd be really awesome if someone would write a script/setup that would run
1124: curl with that test suite and detect deviances. Ideally, that would even be
1125: incorporated into our regular test suite.
1126:
1127: 20.7 Support LD_PRELOAD on macOS
1128:
1129: LD_RELOAD doesn't work on macOS, but there are tests which require it to run
1130: properly. Look into making the preload support in runtests.pl portable such
1131: that it uses DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES on macOS.
1132:
1133: 20.8 Run web-platform-tests url tests
1134:
1135: Run web-platform-tests url tests and compare results with browsers on wpt.fyi
1136:
1137: It would help us find issues to fix and help us document where our parser
1138: differs from the WHATWG URL spec parsers.
1139:
1140: See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4477
1141:
1142: 20.9 Use "random" ports for the test servers
1143:
1144: Instead of insisting and using fixed port numbers for the tests (even though
1145: they can be changed with a switch), consider letting each server pick a
1146: random available one at start-up, store that info in a file and let the test
1147: suite use that.
1148:
1149: We could then remove the "check that it is our server that's running"-check
1150: and we would immediately detect when we write tests wrongly to use hard-coded
1151: port numbers.
1152:
1153: 21. Next SONAME bump
1154:
1155: 21.1 http-style HEAD output for FTP
1156:
1157: #undef CURL_FTP_HTTPSTYLE_HEAD in lib/ftp.c to remove the HTTP-style headers
1158: from being output in NOBODY requests over FTP
1159:
1160: 21.2 combine error codes
1161:
1162: Combine some of the error codes to remove duplicates. The original
1163: numbering should not be changed, and the old identifiers would be
1164: macroed to the new ones in an CURL_NO_OLDIES section to help with
1165: backward compatibility.
1166:
1167: Candidates for removal and their replacements:
1168:
1169: CURLE_FILE_COULDNT_READ_FILE => CURLE_REMOTE_FILE_NOT_FOUND
1170:
1171: CURLE_FTP_COULDNT_RETR_FILE => CURLE_REMOTE_FILE_NOT_FOUND
1172:
1173: CURLE_FTP_COULDNT_USE_REST => CURLE_RANGE_ERROR
1174:
1175: CURLE_FUNCTION_NOT_FOUND => CURLE_FAILED_INIT
1176:
1177: CURLE_LDAP_INVALID_URL => CURLE_URL_MALFORMAT
1178:
1179: CURLE_TFTP_NOSUCHUSER => CURLE_TFTP_ILLEGAL
1180:
1181: CURLE_TFTP_NOTFOUND => CURLE_REMOTE_FILE_NOT_FOUND
1182:
1183: CURLE_TFTP_PERM => CURLE_REMOTE_ACCESS_DENIED
1184:
1185: 21.3 extend CURLOPT_SOCKOPTFUNCTION prototype
1186:
1187: The current prototype only provides 'purpose' that tells what the
1188: connection/socket is for, but not any protocol or similar. It makes it hard
1189: for applications to differentiate on TCP vs UDP and even HTTP vs FTP and
1190: similar.
1191:
1192: 22. Next major release
1193:
1194: 22.1 cleanup return codes
1195:
1196: curl_easy_cleanup() returns void, but curl_multi_cleanup() returns a
1197: CURLMcode. These should be changed to be the same.
1198:
1199: 22.2 remove obsolete defines
1200:
1201: remove obsolete defines from curl/curl.h
1202:
1203: 22.3 size_t
1204:
1205: make several functions use size_t instead of int in their APIs
1206:
1207: 22.4 remove several functions
1208:
1209: remove the following functions from the public API:
1210:
1211: curl_getenv
1212:
1213: curl_mprintf (and variations)
1214:
1215: curl_strequal
1216:
1217: curl_strnequal
1218:
1219: They will instead become curlx_ - alternatives. That makes the curl app
1220: still capable of using them, by building with them from source.
1221:
1222: These functions have no purpose anymore:
1223:
1224: curl_multi_socket
1225:
1226: curl_multi_socket_all
1227:
1228: 22.5 remove CURLOPT_FAILONERROR
1229:
1230: Remove support for CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, it has gotten too kludgy and weird
1231: internally. Let the app judge success or not for itself.
1232:
1233: 22.7 remove progress meter from libcurl
1234:
1235: The internally provided progress meter output doesn't belong in the library.
1236: Basically no application wants it (apart from curl) but instead applications
1237: can and should do their own progress meters using the progress callback.
1238:
1239: The progress callback should then be bumped as well to get proper 64bit
1240: variable types passed to it instead of doubles so that big files work
1241: correctly.
1242:
1243: 22.8 remove 'curl_httppost' from public
1244:
1245: curl_formadd() was made to fill in a public struct, but the fact that the
1246: struct is public is never really used by application for their own advantage
1247: but instead often restricts how the form functions can or can't be modified.
1248:
1249: Changing them to return a private handle will benefit the implementation and
1250: allow us much greater freedoms while still maintaining a solid API and ABI.
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