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curl

    1: Curl on Symbian OS
    2: ==================
    3: This is a basic port of curl and libcurl to Symbian OS.  The port is
    4: a straightforward one using Symbian's P.I.P.S. POSIX compatibility
    5: layer, which was first available for OS version 9.1. A more complete
    6: port would involve writing a Symbian C++ binding, or wrapping libcurl
    7: as a Symbian application server with a C++ API to handle requests
    8: from client applications as well as creating a GUI application to allow
    9: file transfers.  The author has no current plans to do so.
   10: 
   11: This means that integration with standard Symbian OS programs can be
   12: tricky, since libcurl isn't designed with Symbian's native asynchronous
   13: message passing idioms in mind. However, it may be possible to use libcurl
   14: in an active object-based application through libcurl's multi interface.
   15: The port is most easily used when porting POSIX applications to Symbian
   16: OS using P.I.P.S. (a.k.a. Open C).
   17: 
   18: libcurl is built as a standard Symbian ordinal-linked DLL, and curl is
   19: built as a text mode EXE application.  They have not been Symbian
   20: Signed, which is required in order to install them on most phones.
   21: 
   22: Following are some things to keep in mind when using this port.
   23: 
   24: 
   25: curl notes
   26: ----------
   27: When starting curl in the Windows emulator from the Windows command-line,
   28: place a double-dash -- before the first curl command-line option.
   29: e.g. \epoc32\release\winscw\udeb\curl -- -v http://localhost/
   30: Failure to do so may mean that some of your options won't be correctly
   31: processed.
   32: 
   33: Symbian's ESHELL allows for redirecting stdin and stdout to files, but
   34: stderr goes to the epocwind.out file (on the emulator).  The standard
   35: curl options -o, --stderr and --trace-ascii can be used to
   36: redirect output to a file (or stdout) instead.
   37: 
   38: P.I.P.S. doesn't inherit the current working directory at startup from
   39: the shell, so relative path names are always relative to
   40: C:\Private\f0206442\.
   41: 
   42: P.I.P.S. provides no way to disable echoing of characters as they are
   43: entered, so passwords typed in on the console will be visible.  It also
   44: line buffers keyboard input so interactive telnet sessions are not very
   45: feasible.
   46: 
   47: All screen output disappears after curl exits, so after a command completes,
   48: curl waits by default for Enter to be pressed before exiting.  This behaviour
   49: is suppressed when the -s option is given.
   50: 
   51: curl's "home directory" in Symbian is C:\Private\f0206442\. The .curlrc file
   52: is read from this directory on startup.
   53: 
   54: 
   55: libcurl notes
   56: -------------
   57: libcurl uses writable static data, so the EPOCALLOWDLLDATA option is
   58: used in its MMP file, with the corresponding additional memory usage
   59: and limitations on the Windows emulator.
   60: 
   61: curl_global_init() *must* be called (either explicitly or implicitly through
   62: calling certain other libcurl functions) before any libcurl functions
   63: that could allocate memory (like curl_getenv()).
   64: 
   65: P.I.P.S. doesn't support signals or the alarm() call, so some timeouts
   66: (such as the connect timeout) are not honoured. This should not be
   67: an issue once support for CURLRES_THREADED is added for Symbian.
   68: 
   69: P.I.P.S. causes a USER:87 panic if certain timeouts much longer than
   70: half an hour are selected.
   71: 
   72: LDAP, SCP or SFTP methods are not supported due to lack of support for
   73: the dependent libraries on Symbian.
   74: 
   75: gzip and deflate decompression is supported when the appropriate macro
   76: is uncommented in the libcurl.mmp file.
   77: 
   78: SSL/TLS encryption is not enabled by default, but it is possible to add
   79: when the OpenSSL libraries included in the S60 Open C SDK are available.
   80: The appropriate macro in the libcurl.mmp file must be uncommented to
   81: enable support.
   82: 
   83: NTLM authentication may not work on some servers due to the lack of
   84: MD4 support in the OpenSSL libraries included with Open C.
   85: 
   86: Debug builds are not supported (i.e. --enable-debug) because they cause
   87: additional symbol exports in the library which are not frozen in the .def
   88: files.
   89: 
   90: 
   91: Dan Fandrich
   92: dan@coneharvesters.com
   93: March 2010