curl / Docs / Project / TODO

TODO -- nice to have features

libcurl

1.1 TFO support on Windows
1.2 Consult %APPDATA% also for .netrc
1.3 struct lifreq
1.4 Better and more sharing
1.5 get rid of PATH_MAX
1.6 native IDN support on macOS
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
1.15 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 does not work
1.19 provide timing info for each redirect
1.20 SRV and URI DNS records
1.21 netrc caching and sharing
1.22 CURLINFO_PAUSE_STATE
1.23 Offer API to flush the connection pool
1.25 Expose tried IP addresses that failed
1.28 FD_CLOEXEC
1.29 WebSocket read callback
1.30 config file parsing
1.31 erase secrets from heap/stack after use
1.32 add asynch getaddrinfo support
1.33 make DoH inherit more transfer properties

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
2.7 Virtual external sockets
2.8 dynamically decide to use socketpair

Documentation

3.1 Improve documentation about fork safety
3.2 Provide cmake config-file

FTP

4.1 HOST
4.2 Alter passive/active on failure and retry
4.3 Earlier bad letter detection
4.4 Support CURLOPT_PREQUOTE for dir listings too
4.5 ASCII support
4.6 GSSAPI via Windows SSPI
4.7 STAT for LIST without data connection
4.8 Passive transfer could try other IP addresses

HTTP

5.1 Provide the error body from a CONNECT response
5.2 Obey Retry-After in redirects
5.3 Rearrange request header order
5.4 Allow SAN names in HTTP/2 server push
5.5 auth= in URLs
5.6 alt-svc should fallback if alt-svc does not work
5.7 Require HTTP version X or higher

TELNET

6.1 ditch stdin
6.2 ditch telnet-specific select
6.3 feature negotiation debug data
6.4 exit immediately upon connection if stdin is /dev/null

SMTP

7.1 Passing NOTIFY option to CURLOPT_MAIL_RCPT
7.2 Enhanced capability support
7.3 Add CURLOPT_MAIL_CLIENT option

POP3

8.2 Enhanced capability support

IMAP

9.1 Enhanced capability support

LDAP

10.1 SASL based authentication mechanisms
10.2 CURLOPT_SSL_CTX_FUNCTION for LDAPS
10.3 Paged searches on LDAP server
10.4 Certificate-Based Authentication

SMB

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

FILE

12.1 Directory listing for FILE:

TLS

13.1 TLS-PSK with OpenSSL
13.2 Provide mutex locking API
13.3 Defeat TLS fingerprinting
13.4 Cache/share OpenSSL contexts
13.5 Export session ids
13.6 Provide callback for cert verification
13.7 Less memory massaging with Schannel
13.8 Support DANE
13.9 TLS record padding
13.10 Support Authority Information Access certificate extension (AIA)
13.11 Some TLS options are not offered for HTTPS proxies
13.12 Reduce CA certificate bundle reparsing
13.13 Make sure we forbid TLS 1.3 post-handshake authentication
13.14 Support the clienthello extension
13.15 Select signature algorithms

GnuTLS

14.2 check connection

Schannel

15.1 Extend support for client certificate authentication
15.2 Extend support for the --ciphers option
15.4 Add option to allow abrupt server closure

SASL

16.1 Other authentication mechanisms
16.2 Add QOP support to GSSAPI authentication

SSH protocols

17.1 Multiplexing
17.2 Handle growing SFTP files
17.3 Read keys from ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa, id_ed25519
17.4 Support CURLOPT_PREQUOTE
17.5 SSH over HTTPS proxy with more backends
17.6 SFTP with SCP://

Command line tool

18.1 sync
18.2 glob posts
18.4 --proxycommand
18.5 UTF-8 filenames in Content-Disposition
18.6 Option to make -Z merge lined based outputs on stdout
18.8 Consider convenience options for JSON and XML?
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
18.13 Ratelimit or wait between serial requests
18.14 --dry-run
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
18.21 retry on the redirected-to URL
18.23 Set the modification date on an uploaded file
18.24 Use multiple parallel transfers for a single download
18.25 Prevent terminal injection when writing to terminal
18.26 Custom progress meter update interval
18.27 -J and -O with %-encoded file names
18.28 -J with -C -
18.29 --retry and transfer timeouts

Build

19.2 Enable PIE and RELRO by default
19.3 Do not use GNU libtool on OpenBSD
19.4 Package curl for Windows in a signed installer
19.5 make configure use --cache-file more and better
19.6 build curl with Windows Unicode support

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 RFC 6265 test suite
20.7 Support LD_PRELOAD on macOS
20.8 Run web-platform-tests URL tests

MQTT

21.1 Support rate-limiting

TFTP

22.1 TFTP doesn't convert LF to CRLF for mode=netascii


1. libcurl

1.1 TFO support on 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.

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

1.2 Consult %APPDATA% also for .netrc

%APPDATA%\.netrc is not considered when running on Windows. should not it?

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4016

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.

1.4 Better and more sharing

The share interface could benefit from allowing the alt-svc cache to be possible to share between easy handles.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4476

The share interface offers CURL_LOCK_DATA_CONNECT to have multiple easy handle share a connection cache, but due to how connections are used they are still not thread-safe when used shared.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4915 and lib1541.c

The share interface offers CURL_LOCK_DATA_HSTS to have multiple easy handle share a HSTS cache, but this is not thread-safe.

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) does not.

1.6 native IDN support on macOS

On recent macOS versions, the getaddrinfo() function itself has built-in IDN support. By setting the AI_CANONNAME flag, the function will return the encoded name in the ai_canonname struct field in the returned information. This could be used by curl on macOS when built without a separate IDN library and an IDN host name is used in a URL.

See initial work in https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/5371

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 does not 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 is not owned by the application like other sockets.

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

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 an HTTP/2 ping from the peer to verify that they are 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 does not 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

1.19 provide timing info for each redirect

curl and libcurl provide timing information via a set of different time-stamps (CURLINFO_*_TIME). When curl is following redirects, those returned time value are the accumulated sums. An improvement could be to offer separate timings for each redirect.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/6743

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).

1.21 netrc caching and sharing

The netrc file is read and parsed each time a connection is setup, which means that if a transfer needs multiple connections for authentication or redirects, the file might be reread (and parsed) multiple times. This makes it impossible to provide the file as a pipe.

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.

1.25 Expose tried IP addresses that failed

When libcurl fails to connect to a host, it could offer the application the addresses that were used in the attempt. Source + dest IP, source + dest port and protocol (UDP or TCP) for each failure. Possibly as a callback. Perhaps also provide "reason".

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

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 WebSocket read callback

Call the read callback once the connection is established to allow sending the first message in the connection.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/11402

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

1.31 erase secrets from heap/stack after use

Introducing a concept and system to erase secrets from memory after use, it could help mitigate and lessen the impact of (future) security problems etc. However: most secrets are passed to libcurl as clear text from the application and then clearing them within the library adds nothing...

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/7268

1.32 add asynch getaddrinfo support

Use getaddrinfo_a() to provide an asynch name resolver backend to libcurl that does not use threads and does not depend on c-ares. The getaddrinfo_a function is (probably?) glibc specific but that is a widely used libc among our users.

https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/6746

1.33 make DoH inherit more transfer properties

Some options are not inherited because they are not relevant for the DoH SSL connections, or inheriting the option may result in unexpected behavior. For example the user's debug function callback is not inherited because it would be unexpected for internal handles (ie DoH handles) to be passed to that callback.

If an option is not inherited then it is not possible to set it separately for DoH without a DoH-specific option. For example: CURLOPT_DOH_SSL_VERIFYHOST, CURLOPT_DOH_SSL_VERIFYPEER and CURLOPT_DOH_SSL_VERIFYSTATUS.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/6605

2. libcurl - multi interface

2.1 More non-blocking

Make sure we do not 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.

- The threaded resolver may block on cleanup: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4852

- file:// transfers

- TELNET transfers

- GSSAPI authentication for FTP transfers

- The "DONE" operation (post transfer protocol-specific actions) for the protocols SFTP, SMTP, FTP. Fixing multi_done() for this is a worthy task.

- curl_multi_remove_handle for any of the above. See section 2.3.

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 will not 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

2.7 Virtual external sockets

libcurl performs operations on the given file descriptor that presumes it is a socket and an application cannot replace them at the moment. Allowing an application to fully replace those would allow a larger degree of freedom and flexibility.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5835

2.8 dynamically decide to use socketpair

For users who do not use curl_multi_wait() or do not care for curl_multi_wakeup(), we could introduce a way to make libcurl NOT create a socketpair in the multi handle.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4829

3. Documentation

3.1 Improve documentation about fork safety

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/6968

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://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/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.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.

4.4 Support CURLOPT_PREQUOTE for dir listings too

The lack of support is mostly an oversight and requires the FTP state machine to get updated to get fixed.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/8602

4.5 ASCII support

FTP ASCII transfers do not follow RFC 959. They do not 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 Passive transfer could try other IP addresses

When doing FTP operations through a proxy at localhost, the reported spotted that curl only tried to connect once to the proxy, while it had multiple addresses and a failed connect on one address should make it try the next.

After switching to passive mode (EPSV), curl could try all IP addresses for "localhost". Currently it tries ::1, but it should also try 127.0.0.1.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1508

5. HTTP

5.1 Provide the error body from a CONNECT response

When curl receives a body response from a CONNECT request to a proxy, it will always just read and ignore it. It would make some users happy if curl instead optionally would be able to make that responsible available. Via a new callback? Through some other means?

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/9513

5.2 Obey Retry-After in redirects

The Retry-After is said to dicate "the minimum time that the user agent is asked to wait before issuing the redirected request" and libcurl does not obey this.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/11447

5.3 Rearrange request header order

Server implementers 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;auth=NTLM@example.com 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.

5.6 alt-svc should fallback if alt-svc does not work

The alt-svc: header provides a set of alternative services for curl to use instead of the original. If the first attempted one fails, it should try the next etc and if all alternatives fail go back to the original.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4908

5.7 Require HTTP version X or higher

curl and libcurl provide options for trying higher HTTP versions (for example HTTP/2) but then still allows the server to pick version 1.1. We could consider adding a way to require a minimum version.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/7980

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 will not work for telnet.

6.3 feature negotiation debug data

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

6.4 exit immediately upon connection if stdin is /dev/null

If it did, curl could be used to probe if there is an server there listening on a specific port. That is, the following command would exit immediately after the connection is established with exit code 0:

curl -s --connect-timeout 2 telnet://example.com:80 </dev/null

7. SMTP

7.1 Passing NOTIFY option to CURLOPT_MAIL_RCPT

Is there a way to pass the NOTIFY option to the CURLOPT_MAIL_RCPT option ? I set a string that already contains a bracket. For instance something like that: curl_slist_append( recipients, "<foo@bar> NOTIFY=SUCCESS,FAILURE" );

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/8232

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.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.

10.2 CURLOPT_SSL_CTX_FUNCTION for LDAPS

CURLOPT_SSL_CTX_FUNCTION works perfectly for HTTPS and email protocols, but it has no effect for LDAPS connections.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4108

10.3 Paged searches on LDAP server

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4452

10.4 Certificate-Based Authentication

LDAPS not possible with MAC and Windows with Certificate-Based Authentication

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/9641

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 does not exist on the server, just like --ftp-create-dirs.

12. FILE

12.1 Directory listing for FILE:

Add support for listing the contents of a directory accessed with FILE. The output should probably be the same as/similar to FTP.

13. TLS

13.1 TLS-PSK with OpenSSL

Transport Layer Security pre-shared key ciphersuites (TLS-PSK) is a set of cryptographic protocols that provide secure communication based on pre-shared keys (PSKs). These pre-shared keys are symmetric keys shared in advance among the communicating parties.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5081

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 Defeat TLS fingerprinting

By changing the order of TLS extensions provided in the TLS handshake, it is sometimes possible to circumvent TLS fingerprinting by servers. The TLS extension order is of course not the only way to fingerprint a client.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/8119

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 do not create and kill a new SSL "context" for every request, but instead make one for every connection and reuse that SSL context in the same style connections are reused. 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 does not seem to be exposed in the libcurl APIs. Could it be? There is so much that could be done if it were.

13.7 Less memory massaging with Schannel

The Schannel backend does a lot of custom memory management we would rather avoid: the repeated alloc + free in sends and the custom memory + realloc system for encrypted and decrypted data. That should be avoided and reduced for 1) efficiency and 2) safety.

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.se/mail/lib-2013-03/0075.html) but it was a too simple approach. See Daniel's comments: https://curl.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.

13.9 TLS record padding

TLS (1.3) offers optional record padding and OpenSSL provides an API for it. I could make sense for libcurl to offer this ability to applications to make traffic patterns harder to figure out by network traffic observers.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5398

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 does not 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 Some TLS options are not offered for HTTPS proxies

Some TLS related options to the command line tool and libcurl are only provided for the server and not for HTTPS proxies. --proxy-tls-max, --proxy-tlsv1.3, --proxy-curves and a few more.a

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/12286

13.12 Reduce CA certificate bundle reparsing

When using the OpenSSL backend, curl will load and reparse the CA bundle at the creation of the "SSL context" when it sets up a connection to do a TLS handshake. A more effective way would be to somehow cache the CA bundle to avoid it having to be repeatedly reloaded and reparsed.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/9379

13.13 Make sure we forbid TLS 1.3 post-handshake authentication

RFC 8740 explains how using HTTP/2 must forbid the use of TLS 1.3 post-handshake authentication. We should make sure to live up to that.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5396

13.14 Support the clienthello extension

Certain stupid networks and middle boxes have a problem with SSL handshake packets 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://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7685 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2299

13.15 Select signature algorithms

Consider adding an option or a way for users to select TLS signature algorithm. The signature algorithms set by a client are used directly in the supported signature algorithm in the client hello message.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/12982

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. Schannel

15.1 Extend support for client certificate authentication

The existing support for the -E/--cert and --key options could be extended by supplying a custom certificate and key in PEM format, see: - Getting a Certificate for Schannel

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa375447.aspx

15.2 Extend support for the --ciphers option

The existing support for the --ciphers option could be extended 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 allow abrupt server closure

libcurl w/schannel will error without a known termination point from the server (such as length of transfer, or SSL "close notify" alert) to prevent against a truncation attack. Really old servers may neglect to send any termination point. An option could be added to ignore such abrupt closures.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4427

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).

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.

17.2 Handle growing SFTP files

The SFTP code in libcurl checks the file size *before* a transfer starts and then proceeds to transfer exactly that amount of data. If the remote file grows while the transfer is in progress libcurl will not notice and will not adapt. The OpenSSH SFTP command line tool does and libcurl could also just attempt to download more to see if there is more to get...

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4344

17.3 Read keys from ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa, id_ed25519

The libssh2 backend in curl is limited to only reading keys from id_rsa and id_dsa, which makes it fail connecting to servers that use more modern key types.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/8586

17.4 Support CURLOPT_PREQUOTE

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

17.5 SSH over HTTPS proxy with more backends

The SSH based protocols SFTP and SCP did not work over HTTPS proxy at all until PR https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/6021 brought the functionality with the libssh2 backend. Presumably, this support can/could be added for the other backends as well.

17.6 SFTP with SCP://

OpenSSH 9 switched their 'scp' tool to speak SFTP under the hood. Going forward it might be worth having curl or libcurl attempt SFTP if SCP fails to follow suite.

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.

18.4 --proxycommand

Allow the user to make curl run a command and use its stdio to make requests and not do any network connection by itself. Example:

curl --proxycommand 'ssh pi@raspberrypi.local -W 10.1.1.75 80'

 http://some/otherwise/unavailable/service.php

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4941

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

18.6 Option to make -Z merge lined based outputs on stdout

When a user requests multiple lined based files using -Z and sends them to stdout, curl will not "merge" and send complete lines fine but may send partial lines from several sources.

https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5175

18.8 Consider convenience options for JSON and XML?

Could we add `--xml` or `--json` to add headers needed to call rest API:

`--xml` adds -H 'Content-Type: application/xml' -H "Accept: application/xml" and `--json` adds -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H "Accept: application/json"

Setting Content-Type when doing a GET or any other method without a body would be a bit strange I think - so maybe only add CT for requests with body? Maybe plain `--xml` and ` --json` are a bit too brief and generic. Maybe `--http-json` etc?

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5203

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.

18.13 Ratelimit or wait between serial requests

Consider a command line option that can make curl do multiple serial requests slow, potentially with a (random) wait between transfers. There is also a proposed set of standard HTTP headers to let servers let the client adapt to its rate limits: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpapi-ratelimit-headers/

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5406

18.14 --dry-run

A command line option that makes curl show exactly what it would do and send if it would run for real.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5426

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 does not 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 is 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 cannot *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.

18.21 retry on the redirected-to URL

When curl is told to --retry a failed transfer and follows redirects, it might get an HTTP 429 response from the redirected-to URL and not the original one, which then could make curl decide to rather retry the transfer on that URL only instead of the original operation to the original URL.

Perhaps extra emphasized if the original transfer is a large POST that redirects to a separate GET, and that GET is what gets the 529

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5462

18.23 Set the modification date on an uploaded file

For SFTP and possibly FTP, curl could offer an option to set the modification time for the uploaded file.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5768

18.24 Use multiple parallel transfers for a single download

To enhance transfer speed, downloading a single URL can be split up into multiple separate range downloads that get combined into a single final result.

An ideal implementation would not use a specified number of parallel transfers, but curl could: - First start getting the full file as transfer A - If after N seconds have passed and the transfer is expected to continue for

M seconds or more, add a new transfer (B) that asks for the second half of A's content (and stop A at the middle).

- If splitting up the work improves the transfer rate, it could then be done

again. Then again, etc up to a limit.

This way, if transfer B fails (because Range: is not supported) it will let transfer A remain the single one. N and M could be set to some sensible defaults.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5774

18.25 Prevent terminal injection when writing to terminal

curl could offer an option to make escape sequence either non-functional or avoid cursor moves or similar to reduce the risk of a user getting tricked by clever tricks.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/6150

18.26 Custom progress meter update interval

Users who are for example doing large downloads in CI or remote setups might want the occasional progress meter update to see that the transfer is progressing and has not stuck, but they may not appreciate the many-times-a-second frequency curl can end up doing it with now.

18.27 -J and -O with %-encoded file names

-J/--remote-header-name does not decode %-encoded file names. RFC 6266 details how it should be done. The can of worm is basically that we have no charset handling in curl and ascii >=128 is a challenge for us. Not to mention that decoding also means that we need to check for nastiness that is attempted, like "../" sequences and the like. Probably everything to the left of any embedded slashes should be cut off. https://curl.se/bug/view.cgi?id=1294

-O also does not decode %-encoded names, and while it has even less information about the charset involved the process is similar to the -J case.

Note that we will not add decoding to -O without the user asking for it with some other means as well, since -O has always been documented to use the name exactly as specified in the URL.

18.28 -J with -C -

When using -J (with -O), automatically resumed downloading together with "-C -" fails. Without -J the same command line works. This happens because the resume logic is worked out before the target file name (and thus its pre-transfer size) has been figured out. This can be improved.

https://curl.se/bug/view.cgi?id=1169

18.29 --retry and transfer timeouts

If using --retry and the transfer timeouts (possibly due to using -m or -y/-Y) the next attempt does not resume the transfer properly from what was downloaded in the previous attempt but will truncate and restart at the original position where it was at before the previous failed attempt. See https://curl.se/mail/lib-2008-01/0080.html and Mandriva bug report https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=22565

19. Build

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 Do not use GNU libtool on OpenBSD

When compiling curl on OpenBSD with "--enable-debug" it will give linking errors when you use GNU libtool. This can be fixed by using the libtool provided by OpenBSD itself. However for this the user always needs to invoke make with "LIBTOOL=/usr/bin/libtool". It would be nice if the script could have some magic to detect if this system is an OpenBSD host and then use the OpenBSD libtool instead.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5862

19.4 Package curl for Windows in a signed installer

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5424

19.5 make configure use --cache-file more and better

The configure script can be improved to cache more values so that repeated invokes run much faster.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/7753

19.6 build curl with Windows Unicode support

The user wants an easier way to tell autotools to build curl with Windows Unicode support, like ./configure --enable-windows-unicode

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/7229

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 was not found by the configure script, do not attempt to run the tests but explain something nice why it does not.

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 are not used when using different login credentials in protocols that should not reuse a connection under such circumstances.

Unfortunately, ftpserver.pl does not 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 has not been dropped (unless it has been forced - which we should not do in these tests) and thus the wait for connections loop is never entered to receive the second connection.

20.6 Use the RFC 6265 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 does not 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.

20.8 Run web-platform-tests URL tests

Run web-platform-tests URL tests and compare results with browsers on wpt.fyi

It would help us find issues to fix and help us document where our parser differs from the WHATWG URL spec parsers.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4477

21. MQTT

21.1 Support rate-limiting

The rate-limiting logic is done in the PERFORMING state in multi.c but MQTT is not (yet) implemented to use that.

22. TFTP

22.1 TFTP doesn't convert LF to CRLF for mode=netascii

RFC 3617 defines that an TFTP transfer can be done using "netascii" mode. curl does not support extracting that mode from the URL nor does it treat such transfers specifically. It should probably do LF to CRLF translations for them.

See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/12655