_ _ ____ _

___| | | | _ \| |
/ __| | | | |_) | |
| (__| |_| | _ <| |___
\___|\___/|_| \_\_____|

Things that could be nice to do in the future

Things to do in project curl. Please tell us what you think, contribute and
send us patches that improve things!

Be aware that these are things that we could do, or have once been considered
things we could do. If you want to work on any of these areas, please
consider bringing it up for discussions first on the mailing list so that we
all agree it is still a good idea for the project!

All bugs documented in the KNOWN_BUGS document are subject for fixing!

1. libcurl
1.1 TFO support on Windows
1.3 struct lifreq
1.5 get rid of PATH_MAX
1.7 Support HTTP/2 for HTTP(S) proxies
1.8 CURLOPT_RESOLVE for any port number
1.9 Cache negative name resolves
1.10 auto-detect proxy
1.11 minimize dependencies with dynamically loaded modules
1.12 updated DNS server while running
1.13 c-ares and CURLOPT_OPENSOCKETFUNCTION
1.14 Typesafe curl_easy_setopt()
1.15 Monitor connections in the connection pool
1.16 Try to URL encode given URL
1.17 Add support for IRIs
1.18 try next proxy if one doesn't work
1.20 SRV and URI DNS records
1.22 CURLINFO_PAUSE_STATE
1.23 Offer API to flush the connection pool
1.24 TCP Fast Open for windows
1.25 Expose tried IP addresses that failed
1.27 hardcode the "localhost" addresses
1.28 FD_CLOEXEC
1.29 Upgrade to websockets
1.30 config file parsing

2. libcurl - multi interface

2.1 More non-blocking
2.2 Better support for same name resolves
2.3 Non-blocking curl_multi_remove_handle()
2.4 Split connect and authentication process
2.5 Edge-triggered sockets should work
2.6 multi upkeep

3. Documentation
3.2 Provide cmake config-file

4. FTP
4.1 HOST
4.2 Alter passive/active on failure and retry
4.3 Earlier bad letter detection
4.5 ASCII support
4.6 GSSAPI via Windows SSPI
4.7 STAT for LIST without data connection
4.8 Option to ignore private IP addresses in PASV response

5. HTTP
5.1 Better persistency for HTTP 1.0
5.3 Rearrange request header order
5.4 Allow SAN names in HTTP/2 server push
5.5 auth= in URLs

6. TELNET
6.1 ditch stdin
6.2 ditch telnet-specific select
6.3 feature negotiation debug data

7. SMTP
7.2 Enhanced capability support
7.3 Add CURLOPT_MAIL_CLIENT option

8. POP3
8.2 Enhanced capability support

9. IMAP
9.1 Enhanced capability support

10. LDAP
10.1 SASL based authentication mechanisms

11. SMB
11.1 File listing support
11.2 Honor file timestamps
11.3 Use NTLMv2
11.4 Create remote directories

12. New protocols

13. SSL
13.2 Provide mutex locking API
13.3 Support in-memory certs/ca certs/keys
13.4 Cache/share OpenSSL contexts
13.5 Export session ids
13.6 Provide callback for cert verification
13.7 improve configure --with-ssl
13.8 Support DANE
13.10 Support Authority Information Access certificate extension (AIA)
13.11 Support intermediate & root pinning for PINNEDPUBLICKEY
13.12 Support HSTS
13.14 Support the clienthello extension

14. GnuTLS
14.2 check connection

15. WinSSL/SChannel
15.1 Add support for client certificate authentication
15.3 Add support for the --ciphers option
15.4 Add option to disable client certificate auto-send

16. SASL
 16.1 Other authentication mechanisms
16.2 Add QOP support to GSSAPI authentication
16.3 Support binary messages (i.e.: non-base64)

17. SSH protocols

17.1 Multiplexing
17.3 Support better than MD5 hostkey hash
17.4 Support CURLOPT_PREQUOTE

18. Command line tool

18.1 sync
18.2 glob posts
18.3 prevent file overwriting
18.5 UTF-8 filenames in Content-Disposition
18.7 at least N milliseconds between requests
18.9 Choose the name of file in braces for complex URLs
18.10 improve how curl works in a windows console window
18.11 Windows: set attribute 'archive' for completed downloads
18.12 keep running, read instructions from pipe/socket
18.15 --retry should resume
18.16 send only part of --data
18.17 consider file name from the redirected URL with -O ?
18.18 retry on network is unreachable
18.19 expand ~/ in config files
18.20 host name sections in config files

19. Build
19.1 roffit
19.2 Enable PIE and RELRO by default
19.3 cmake test suite improvements

20. Test suite

20.1 SSL tunnel
20.2 nicer lacking perl message
20.3 more protocols supported
20.4 more platforms supported
20.5 Add support for concurrent connections
20.6 Use the RFC6265 test suite
20.7 Support LD_PRELOAD on macOS

21. Next SONAME bump

21.1 http-style HEAD output for FTP
21.2 combine error codes
21.3 extend CURLOPT_SOCKOPTFUNCTION prototype

22. Next major release

22.1 cleanup return codes
22.2 remove obsolete defines
22.3 size_t
22.4 remove several functions
22.5 remove CURLOPT_FAILONERROR
22.7 remove progress meter from libcurl
22.8 remove 'curl_httppost' from public

==============================================================================

1. libcurl

1.1 TFO support on Windows

 TCP Fast Open is supported on several platforms but not on Windows. Work on
this was once started but never finished.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/3378

1.3 struct lifreq

Use 'struct lifreq' and SIOCGLIFADDR instead of 'struct ifreq' and

SIOCGIFADDR on newer Solaris versions as they claim the latter is obsolete.
To support IPv6 interface addresses for network interfaces properly.

1.5 get rid of PATH_MAX

Having code use and rely on PATH_MAX is not nice:

https://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2007/11/pathmax-simply-isnt.html

Currently the libssh2 SSH based code uses it, but to remove PATH_MAX from
there we need libssh2 to properly tell us when we pass in a too small buffer
and its current API (as of libssh2 1.2.7) doesn't.

1.7 Support HTTP/2 for HTTP(S) proxies

Support for doing HTTP/2 to HTTP and HTTPS proxies is still missing.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3570

1.8 CURLOPT_RESOLVE for any port number

This option allows applications to set a replacement IP address for a given

host + port pair. Consider making support for providing a replacement address
for the host name on all port numbers.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1264

1.9 Cache negative name resolves

A name resolve that has failed is likely to fail when made again within a
short period of time. Currently we only cache positive responses.

1.10 auto-detect proxy

libcurl could be made to detect the system proxy setup automatically and use
that. On Windows, macOS and Linux desktops for example.

The pull-request to use libproxy for this was deferred due to doubts on the
reliability of the dependency and how to use it:
https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/977

libdetectproxy is a (C++) library for detecting the proxy on Windows

https://github.com/paulharris/libdetectproxy

1.11 minimize dependencies with dynamically loaded modules

We can create a system with loadable modules/plug-ins, where these modules

would be the ones that link to 3rd party libs. That would allow us to avoid
having to load ALL dependencies since only the necessary ones for this
app/invoke/used protocols would be necessary to load. See
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/349
1.12 updated DNS server while running

If /etc/resolv.conf gets updated while a program using libcurl is running, it

is may cause name resolves to fail unless res_init() is called. We should
consider calling res_init() + retry once unconditionally on all name resolve
failures to mitigate against this. Firefox works like that. Note that Windows
doesn't have res_init() or an alternative.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2251

1.13 c-ares and CURLOPT_OPENSOCKETFUNCTION

curl will create most sockets via the CURLOPT_OPENSOCKETFUNCTION callback and
close them with the CURLOPT_CLOSESOCKETFUNCTION callback. However, c-ares
does not use those functions and instead opens and closes the sockets
itself. This means that when curl passes the c-ares socket to the
CURLMOPT_SOCKETFUNCTION it isn't owned by the application like other sockets.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2734

1.14 Typesafe curl_easy_setopt()

One of the most common problems in libcurl using applications is the lack of
type checks for curl_easy_setopt() which happens because it accepts varargs
and thus can take any type.

One possible solution to this is to introduce a few different versions of the

setopt version for the different kinds of data you can set.

curl_easy_set_num() - sets a long value

curl_easy_set_large() - sets a curl_off_t value

curl_easy_set_ptr() - sets a pointer

curl_easy_set_cb() - sets a callback PLUS its callback data

1.15 Monitor connections in the connection pool

libcurl's connection cache or pool holds a number of open connections for the
purpose of possible subsequent connection reuse. It may contain a few up to a
significant amount of connections. Currently, libcurl leaves all connections
as they are and first when a connection is iterated over for matching or
reuse purpose it is verified that it is still alive.

Those connections may get closed by the server side for idleness or they may
get a HTTP/2 ping from the peer to verify that they're still alive. By adding
monitoring of the connections while in the pool, libcurl can detect dead
connections (and close them) better and earlier, and it can handle HTTP/2
pings to keep such ones alive even when not actively doing transfers on them.

1.16 Try to URL encode given URL

Given a URL that for example contains spaces, libcurl could have an option
that would try somewhat harder than it does now and convert spaces to %20 and
perhaps URL encoded byte values over 128 etc (basically do what the redirect
following code already does).
 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/514

1.17 Add support for IRIs

IRIs (RFC 3987) allow localized, non-ascii, names in the URL. To properly
support this, curl/libcurl would need to translate/encode the given input
from the input string encoding into percent encoded output "over the wire".

To make that work smoothly for curl users even on Windows, curl would
probably need to be able to convert from several input encodings.

1.18 try next proxy if one doesn't work

Allow an application to specify a list of proxies to try, and failing to

connect to the first go on and try the next instead until the list is
exhausted. Browsers support this feature at least when they specify proxies
using PACs.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/896

1.20 SRV and URI DNS records

Offer support for resolving SRV and URI DNS records for libcurl to know which
server to connect to for various protocols (including HTTP!).

1.22 CURLINFO_PAUSE_STATE

Return information about the transfer's current pause state, in both

directions. https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2588

1.23 Offer API to flush the connection pool

Sometimes applications want to flush all the existing connections kept alive.
An API could allow a forced flush or just a forced loop that would properly
close all connections that have been closed by the server already.

1.24 TCP Fast Open for windows

libcurl supports the CURLOPT_TCP_FASTOPEN option since 7.49.0 for Linux and
Mac OS. Windows supports TCP Fast Open starting with Windows 10, version 1607
and we should add support for it.

1.25 Expose tried IP addresses that failed

When libcurl fails to connect to a host, it should be able to offer the

application the list of IP addresses that were used in the attempt.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2126

1.27 hardcode the "localhost" addresses

There's this new spec getting adopted that says "localhost" should always and
unconditionally be a local address and not get resolved by a DNS server. A
fine way for curl to fix this would be to simply hard-code the response to
127.0.0.1 and/or ::1 (depending on what IP versions that are requested). This
is what the browsers probably will do with this hostname.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1220810
 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dnsop-let-localhost-be-localhost-02

1.28 FD_CLOEXEC

It sets the close-on-exec flag for the file descriptor, which causes the file
descriptor to be automatically (and atomically) closed when any of the
exec-family functions succeed. Should probably be set by default?

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2252

1.29 Upgrade to websockets

libcurl could offer a smoother path to get to a websocket connection.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3523

Michael Kaufmann suggestion here:

https://curl.haxx.se/video/curlup-2017/2017-03-
19_05_Michael_Kaufmann_Websocket_support_for_curl.mp4

1.30 config file parsing

Consider providing an API, possibly in a separate companion library, for

parsing a config file like curl's -K/--config option to allow applications to
get the same ability to read curl options from files.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3698

2. libcurl - multi interface

2.1 More non-blocking

Make sure we don't ever loop because of non-blocking sockets returning

EWOULDBLOCK or similar. Blocking cases include:

- Name resolves on non-windows unless c-ares or the threaded resolver is used

- SOCKS proxy handshakes
- file:// transfers
- TELNET transfers
- The "DONE" operation (post transfer protocol-specific actions) for the
protocols SFTP, SMTP, FTP. Fixing Curl_done() for this is a worthy task.

2.2 Better support for same name resolves

If a name resolve has been initiated for name NN and a second easy handle
wants to resolve that name as well, make it wait for the first resolve to end
up in the cache instead of doing a second separate resolve. This is
especially needed when adding many simultaneous handles using the same host
name when the DNS resolver can get flooded.

2.3 Non-blocking curl_multi_remove_handle()

The multi interface has a few API calls that assume a blocking behavior, like
add_handle() and remove_handle() which limits what we can do internally. The
multi API need to be moved even more into a single function that "drives"
everything in a non-blocking manner and signals when something is done. A
remove or add would then only ask for the action to get started and then
multi_perform() etc still be called until the add/remove is completed.

2.4 Split connect and authentication process

 The multi interface treats the authentication process as part of the connect
phase. As such any failures during authentication won't trigger the relevant
QUIT or LOGOFF for protocols such as IMAP, POP3 and SMTP.

2.5 Edge-triggered sockets should work

The multi_socket API should work with edge-triggered socket events. One of
the internal actions that need to be improved for this to work perfectly is
the 'maxloops' handling in transfer.c:readwrite_data().

2.6 multi upkeep

In libcurl 7.62.0 we introduced curl_easy_upkeep. It unfortunately only works

on easy handles. We should introduces a version of that for the multi handle,
and also consider doing "upkeep" automatically on connections in the
connection pool when the multi handle is in used.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3199

3. Documentation

3.2 Provide cmake config-file

A config-file package is a set of files provided by us to allow applications

to write cmake scripts to find and use libcurl easier. See
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/885

4. FTP

4.1 HOST

HOST is a command for a client to tell which host name to use, to offer FTP
servers named-based virtual hosting:

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7151

4.2 Alter passive/active on failure and retry

When trying to connect passively to a server which only supports active

connections, libcurl returns CURLE_FTP_WEIRD_PASV_REPLY and closes the
connection. There could be a way to fallback to an active connection (and
vice versa). https://curl.haxx.se/bug/feature.cgi?id=1754793

4.3 Earlier bad letter detection

Make the detection of (bad) %0d and %0a codes in FTP URL parts earlier in the
process to avoid doing a resolve and connect in vain.

4.5 ASCII support

FTP ASCII transfers do not follow RFC959. They don't convert the data
accordingly.

4.6 GSSAPI via Windows SSPI

In addition to currently supporting the SASL GSSAPI mechanism (Kerberos V5)

via third-party GSS-API libraries, such as Heimdal or MIT Kerberos, also add
support for GSSAPI authentication via Windows SSPI.
4.7 STAT for LIST without data connection

Some FTP servers allow STAT for listing directories instead of using LIST,
and the response is then sent over the control connection instead of as the
otherwise usedw data connection: https://www.nsftools.com/tips/RawFTP.htm#STAT

This is not detailed in any FTP specification.

4.8 Option to ignore private IP addresses in PASV response

Some servers respond with and some other FTP client implementations can
ignore private (RFC 1918 style) IP addresses when received in PASV responses.
To consider for libcurl as well. See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1455

5. HTTP

5.1 Better persistency for HTTP 1.0

"Better" support for persistent connections over HTTP 1.0

https://curl.haxx.se/bug/feature.cgi?id=1089001

5.3 Rearrange request header order

Server implementors often make an effort to detect browser and to reject

clients it can detect to not match. One of the last details we cannot yet
control in libcurl's HTTP requests, which also can be exploited to detect
that libcurl is in fact used even when it tries to impersonate a browser, is
the order of the request headers. I propose that we introduce a new option in
which you give headers a value, and then when the HTTP request is built it
sorts the headers based on that number. We could then have internally created
headers use a default value so only headers that need to be moved have to be
specified.

5.4 Allow SAN names in HTTP/2 server push

curl only allows HTTP/2 push promise if the provided :authority header value
exactly matches the host name given in the URL. It could be extended to allow
any name that would match the Subject Alternative Names in the server's TLS
certificate.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/3581

5.5 auth= in URLs

Add the ability to specify the preferred authentication mechanism to use by

using ;auth=<mech> in the login part of the URL.

For example:

http://test:pass;[email protected] would be equivalent to specifying

--user test:pass;auth=NTLM or --user test:pass --ntlm from the command line.

Additionally this should be implemented for proxy base URLs as well.

6. TELNET

6.1 ditch stdin

 Reading input (to send to the remote server) on stdin is a crappy solution
for library purposes. We need to invent a good way for the application to be
able to provide the data to send.

6.2 ditch telnet-specific select

Move the telnet support's network select() loop go away and merge the code
into the main transfer loop. Until this is done, the multi interface won't
work for telnet.

6.3 feature negotiation debug data

Add telnet feature negotiation data to the debug callback as header data.

7. SMTP

7.2 Enhanced capability support

Add the ability, for an application that uses libcurl, to obtain the list of
capabilities returned from the EHLO command.

7.3 Add CURLOPT_MAIL_CLIENT option

Rather than use the URL to specify the mail client string to present in the
HELO and EHLO commands, libcurl should support a new CURLOPT specifically for
specifying this data as the URL is non-standard and to be honest a bit of a
hack ;-)

Please see the following thread for more information:

https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2012-05/0178.html

8. POP3

8.2 Enhanced capability support

Add the ability, for an application that uses libcurl, to obtain the list of
capabilities returned from the CAPA command.

9. IMAP

9.1 Enhanced capability support

Add the ability, for an application that uses libcurl, to obtain the list of
capabilities returned from the CAPABILITY command.

10. LDAP

10.1 SASL based authentication mechanisms

Currently the LDAP module only supports ldap_simple_bind_s() in order to bind

to an LDAP server. However, this function sends username and password details
using the simple authentication mechanism (as clear text). However, it should
be possible to use ldap_bind_s() instead specifying the security context
information ourselves.

11. SMB
11.1 File listing support

Add support for listing the contents of a SMB share. The output should probably
be the same as/similar to FTP.

11.2 Honor file timestamps

The timestamp of the transferred file should reflect that of the original file.

11.3 Use NTLMv2

Currently the SMB authentication uses NTLMv1.

11.4 Create remote directories

Support for creating remote directories when uploading a file to a directory

that doesn't exist on the server, just like --ftp-create-dirs.

12. New protocols

13. SSL

13.2 Provide mutex locking API

Provide a libcurl API for setting mutex callbacks in the underlying SSL
library, so that the same application code can use mutex-locking
independently of OpenSSL or GnutTLS being used.

13.3 Support in-memory certs/ca certs/keys

You can specify the private and public keys for SSH/SSL as file paths. Some
programs want to avoid using files and instead just pass them as in-memory
data blobs. There's probably a challenge to make this work across the
plethory of different TLS and SSH backends that curl supports.
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2310

13.4 Cache/share OpenSSL contexts

"Look at SSL cafile - quick traces look to me like these are done on every
request as well, when they should only be necessary once per SSL context (or
once per handle)". The major improvement we can rather easily do is to make
sure we don't create and kill a new SSL "context" for every request, but
instead make one for every connection and re-use that SSL context in the same
style connections are re-used. It will make us use slightly more memory but
it will libcurl do less creations and deletions of SSL contexts.

Technically, the "caching" is probably best implemented by getting added to

the share interface so that easy handles who want to and can reuse the
context specify that by sharing with the right properties set.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1110

13.5 Export session ids

Add an interface to libcurl that enables "session IDs" to get

exported/imported. Cris Bailiff said: "OpenSSL has functions which can
serialise the current SSL state to a buffer of your choice, and recover/reset
the state from such a buffer at a later date - this is used by mod_ssl for
 apache to implement and SSL session ID cache".

13.6 Provide callback for cert verification

OpenSSL supports a callback for customised verification of the peer

certificate, but this doesn't seem to be exposed in the libcurl APIs. Could
it be? There's so much that could be done if it were!

13.7 improve configure --with-ssl

make the configure --with-ssl option first check for OpenSSL, then GnuTLS,
then NSS...

13.8 Support DANE

DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) is a way to provide SSL

keys and certs over DNS using DNSSEC as an alternative to the CA model.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6698.txt

An initial patch was posted by Suresh Krishnaswamy on March 7th 2013

(https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2013-03/0075.html) but it was a too simple
approach. See Daniel's comments:
https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2013-03/0103.html . libunbound may be the
correct library to base this development on.

Björn Stenberg wrote a separate initial take on DANE that was never
completed.

13.10 Support Authority Information Access certificate extension (AIA)

AIA can provide various things like CRLs but more importantly information
about intermediate CA certificates that can allow validation path to be
fulfilled when the HTTPS server doesn't itself provide them.

Since AIA is about downloading certs on demand to complete a TLS handshake,

it is probably a bit tricky to get done right.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2793

13.11 Support intermediate & root pinning for PINNEDPUBLICKEY

CURLOPT_PINNEDPUBLICKEY does not consider the hashes of intermediate & root

certificates when comparing the pinned keys. Therefore it is not compatible
with "HTTP Public Key Pinning" as there also intermediate and root certificates
can be pinned. This is very useful as it prevents webadmins from "locking
themself out of their servers".

Adding this feature would make curls pinning 100% compatible to HPKP and allow
more flexible pinning.

13.12 Support HSTS

"HTTP Strict Transport Security" is TOFU (trust on first use), time-based

features indicated by a HTTP header send by the webserver. It is widely used
in browsers and it's purpose is to prevent insecure HTTP connections after
a previous HTTPS connection. It protects against SSLStripping attacks.

Doc:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/HTTP_strict_transport_securit
y
RFC 6797: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6797

13.14 Support the clienthello extension

Certain stupid networks and middle boxes have a problem with SSL handshake
pakets that are within a certain size range because how that sets some bits
that previously (in older TLS version) were not set. The clienthello
extension adds padding to avoid that size range.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7685
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2299

14. GnuTLS

14.2 check connection

Add a way to check if the connection seems to be alive, to correspond to the

SSL_peak() way we use with OpenSSL.

15. WinSSL/SChannel

15.1 Add support for client certificate authentication

WinSSL/SChannel currently makes use of the OS-level system and user

certificate and private key stores. This does not allow the application
or the user to supply a custom client certificate using curl or libcurl.

Therefore support for the existing -E/--cert and --key options should be
implemented by supplying a custom certificate to the SChannel APIs, see:
- Getting a Certificate for Schannel
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa375447.aspx

15.3 Add support for the --ciphers option

The cipher suites used by WinSSL/SChannel are configured on an OS-level

instead of an application-level. This does not allow the application or
the user to customize the configured cipher suites using curl or libcurl.

Therefore support for the existing --ciphers option should be implemented

by mapping the OpenSSL/GnuTLS cipher suites to the SChannel APIs, see
- Specifying Schannel Ciphers and Cipher Strengths
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa380161.aspx

15.4 Add option to disable client certificate auto-send

Microsoft says "By default, Schannel will, with no notification to the client,
attempt to locate a client certificate and send it to the server." That could
be considered a privacy violation and unexpected.

Some Windows users have come to expect that default behavior and to change the
default to make it consistent with other SSL backends would be a breaking
change. An option should be added that can be used to disable the default
Schannel auto-send behavior.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2262

16. SASL
16.1 Other authentication mechanisms

Add support for other authentication mechanisms such as OLP,

GSS-SPNEGO and others.

16.2 Add QOP support to GSSAPI authentication

Currently the GSSAPI authentication only supports the default QOP of auth
(Authentication), whilst Kerberos V5 supports both auth-int (Authentication
with integrity protection) and auth-conf (Authentication with integrity and
privacy protection).

16.3 Support binary messages (i.e.: non-base64)

Mandatory to support LDAP SASL authentication.

17. SSH protocols

17.1 Multiplexing

SSH is a perfectly fine multiplexed protocols which would allow libcurl to do

multiple parallel transfers from the same host using the same connection,
much in the same spirit as HTTP/2 does. libcurl however does not take
advantage of that ability but will instead always create a new connection for
new transfers even if an existing connection already exists to the host.

To fix this, libcurl would have to detect an existing connection and "attach"
the new transfer to the existing one.

17.3 Support better than MD5 hostkey hash

libcurl offers the CURLOPT_SSH_HOST_PUBLIC_KEY_MD5 option for verifying the

server's key. MD5 is generally being deprecated so we should implement
support for stronger hashing algorithms. libssh2 itself is what provides this
underlying functionality and it supports at least SHA-1 as an alternative.
SHA-1 is also being deprecated these days so we should consider working with
libssh2 to instead offer support for SHA-256 or similar.

17.4 Support CURLOPT_PREQUOTE

The two other QUOTE options are supported for SFTP, but this was left out for
unknown reasons!

18. Command line tool

18.1 sync

"curl --sync http://example.com/feed[1-100].rss" or

"curl --sync http://example.net/{index,calendar,history}.html"

Downloads a range or set of URLs using the remote name, but only if the
remote file is newer than the local file. A Last-Modified HTTP date header
should also be used to set the mod date on the downloaded file.

18.2 glob posts

Globbing support for -d and -F, as in 'curl -d "name=foo[0-9]" URL'.

This is easily scripted though.
18.3 prevent file overwriting

Add an option that prevents curl from overwriting existing local files. When
used, and there already is an existing file with the target file name
(either -O or -o), a number should be appended (and increased if already
existing). So that index.html becomes first index.html.1 and then
index.html.2 etc.

18.5 UTF-8 filenames in Content-Disposition

RFC 6266 documents how UTF-8 names can be passed to a client in the
Content-Disposition header, and curl does not support this.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1888

18.7 at least N milliseconds between requests

Allow curl command lines issue a lot of request against services that limit
users to no more than N requests/second or similar. Could be implemented with
an option asking that at least a certain time has elapsed since the previous
request before the next one will be performed. Example:

$ curl "https://example.com/api?input=[1-1000]" -d yadayada --after 500

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3920

18.9 Choose the name of file in braces for complex URLs

When using braces to download a list of URLs and you use complicated names
in the list of alternatives, it could be handy to allow curl to use other
names when saving.

Consider a way to offer that. Possibly like

{partURL1:name1,partURL2:name2,partURL3:name3} where the name following the
colon is the output name.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/221

18.10 improve how curl works in a windows console window

If you pull the scrollbar when transferring with curl in a Windows console
window, the transfer is interrupted and can get disconnected. This can
probably be improved. See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/322

18.11 Windows: set attribute 'archive' for completed downloads

The archive bit (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ARCHIVE, 0x20) separates files that shall be

backed up from those that are either not ready or have not changed.

Downloads in progress are neither ready to be backed up, nor should they be
opened by a different process. Only after a download has been completed it's
sensible to include it in any integer snapshot or backup of the system.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3354

18.12 keep running, read instructions from pipe/socket

Provide an option that makes curl not exit after the last URL (or even work
 without a given URL), and then make it read instructions passed on a pipe or
over a socket to make further instructions so that a second subsequent curl
invoke can talk to the still running instance and ask for transfers to get
done, and thus maintain its connection pool, DNS cache and more.

18.15 --retry should resume

When --retry is used and curl actually retries transfer, it should use the
already transferred data and do a resumed transfer for the rest (when
possible) so that it doesn't have to transfer the same data again that was
already transferred before the retry.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1084

18.16 send only part of --data

When the user only wants to send a small piece of the data provided with
--data or --data-binary, like when that data is a huge file, consider a way
to specify that curl should only send a piece of that. One suggested syntax
would be: "--data-binary @largefile.zip!1073741823-2147483647".

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1200

18.17 consider file name from the redirected URL with -O ?

When a user gives a URL and uses -O, and curl follows a redirect to a new
URL, the file name is not extracted and used from the newly redirected-to URL
even if the new URL may have a much more sensible file name.

This is clearly documented and helps for security since there's no surprise
to users which file name that might get overwritten. But maybe a new option
could allow for this or maybe -J should imply such a treatment as well as -J
already allows for the server to decide what file name to use so it already
provides the "may overwrite any file" risk.

This is extra tricky if the original URL has no file name part at all since
then the current code path will error out with an error message, and we can't
*know* already at that point if curl will be redirected to a URL that has a
file name...

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1241

18.18 retry on network is unreachable

The --retry option retries transfers on "transient failures". We later added

--retry-connrefused to also retry for "connection refused" errors.

Suggestions have been brought to also allow retry on "network is unreachable"

errors and while totally reasonable, maybe we should consider a way to make
this more configurable than to add a new option for every new error people
want to retry for?

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1603

18.19 expand ~/ in config files

For example .curlrc could benefit from being able to do this.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2317
18.20 host name sections in config files

config files would be more powerful if they could set different

configurations depending on used URLs, host name or possibly origin. Then a
default .curlrc could a specific user-agent only when doing requests against
a certain site.

19. Build

19.1 roffit

Consider extending 'roffit' to produce decent ASCII output, and use that
instead of (g)nroff when building src/tool_hugehelp.c

19.2 Enable PIE and RELRO by default

Especially when having programs that execute curl via the command line, PIE
renders the exploitation of memory corruption vulnerabilities a lot more
difficult. This can be attributed to the additional information leaks being
required to conduct a successful attack. RELRO, on the other hand, masks
different binary sections like the GOT as read-only and thus kills a handful
of techniques that come in handy when attackers are able to arbitrarily
overwrite memory. A few tests showed that enabling these features had close
to no impact, neither on the performance nor on the general functionality of
curl.

19.3 cmake test suite improvements

The cmake build doesn't support 'make show' so it doesn't know which tests
are in the makefile or not (making appveyor builds do many false warnings
about it) nor does it support running the test suite if building out-of-tree.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3109

20. Test suite

20.1 SSL tunnel

Make our own version of stunnel for simple port forwarding to enable HTTPS
and FTP-SSL tests without the stunnel dependency, and it could allow us to
provide test tools built with either OpenSSL or GnuTLS

20.2 nicer lacking perl message

If perl wasn't found by the configure script, don't attempt to run the tests
but explain something nice why it doesn't.

20.3 more protocols supported

Extend the test suite to include more protocols. The telnet could just do FTP
or http operations (for which we have test servers).

20.4 more platforms supported

Make the test suite work on more platforms. OpenBSD and Mac OS. Remove
fork()s and it should become even more portable.
20.5 Add support for concurrent connections

Tests 836, 882 and 938 were designed to verify that separate connections
aren't used when using different login credentials in protocols that
shouldn't re-use a connection under such circumstances.

Unfortunately, ftpserver.pl doesn't appear to support multiple concurrent

connections. The read while() loop seems to loop until it receives a
disconnect from the client, where it then enters the waiting for connections
loop. When the client opens a second connection to the server, the first
connection hasn't been dropped (unless it has been forced - which we
shouldn't do in these tests) and thus the wait for connections loop is never
entered to receive the second connection.

20.6 Use the RFC6265 test suite

A test suite made for HTTP cookies (RFC 6265) by Adam Barth is available at
https://github.com/abarth/http-state/tree/master/tests

It'd be really awesome if someone would write a script/setup that would run
curl with that test suite and detect deviances. Ideally, that would even be
incorporated into our regular test suite.

20.7 Support LD_PRELOAD on macOS

LD_RELOAD doesn't work on macOS, but there are tests which require it to run
properly. Look into making the preload support in runtests.pl portable such
that it uses DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES on macOS.

21. Next SONAME bump

21.1 http-style HEAD output for FTP

#undef CURL_FTP_HTTPSTYLE_HEAD in lib/ftp.c to remove the HTTP-style headers

from being output in NOBODY requests over FTP

21.2 combine error codes

Combine some of the error codes to remove duplicates. The original

numbering should not be changed, and the old identifiers would be
macroed to the new ones in an CURL_NO_OLDIES section to help with
backward compatibility.

Candidates for removal and their replacements:

CURLE_FILE_COULDNT_READ_FILE => CURLE_REMOTE_FILE_NOT_FOUND

CURLE_FTP_COULDNT_RETR_FILE => CURLE_REMOTE_FILE_NOT_FOUND

CURLE_FTP_COULDNT_USE_REST => CURLE_RANGE_ERROR

CURLE_FUNCTION_NOT_FOUND => CURLE_FAILED_INIT

CURLE_LDAP_INVALID_URL => CURLE_URL_MALFORMAT

CURLE_TFTP_NOSUCHUSER => CURLE_TFTP_ILLEGAL

CURLE_TFTP_NOTFOUND => CURLE_REMOTE_FILE_NOT_FOUND

 CURLE_TFTP_PERM => CURLE_REMOTE_ACCESS_DENIED

21.3 extend CURLOPT_SOCKOPTFUNCTION prototype

The current prototype only provides 'purpose' that tells what the
connection/socket is for, but not any protocol or similar. It makes it hard
for applications to differentiate on TCP vs UDP and even HTTP vs FTP and
similar.

22. Next major release

22.1 cleanup return codes

curl_easy_cleanup() returns void, but curl_multi_cleanup() returns a

CURLMcode. These should be changed to be the same.

22.2 remove obsolete defines

remove obsolete defines from curl/curl.h

22.3 size_t

make several functions use size_t instead of int in their APIs

22.4 remove several functions

remove the following functions from the public API:

curl_getenv

curl_mprintf (and variations)

curl_strequal

curl_strnequal

They will instead become curlx_ - alternatives. That makes the curl app
still capable of using them, by building with them from source.

These functions have no purpose anymore:

curl_multi_socket

curl_multi_socket_all

22.5 remove CURLOPT_FAILONERROR

Remove support for CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, it has gotten too kludgy and weird
internally. Let the app judge success or not for itself.

22.7 remove progress meter from libcurl

The internally provided progress meter output doesn't belong in the library.
Basically no application wants it (apart from curl) but instead applications
can and should do their own progress meters using the progress callback.

The progress callback should then be bumped as well to get proper 64bit
variable types passed to it instead of doubles so that big files work
correctly.
22.8 remove 'curl_httppost' from public

curl_formadd() was made to fill in a public struct, but the fact that the
struct is public is never really used by application for their own advantage
but instead often restricts how the form functions can or can't be modified.

Changing them to return a private handle will benefit the implementation and
allow us much greater freedoms while still maintaining a solid API and ABI.