On Mon, 17 Nov 2008, Starbuck wrote:

> Daniel, I was looking at the C# binding several months ago, saw that it was
> old and unmaintained, and I was wondering why that is. Do you think people
> are just more inclined to use the native .NET components? Might more C#
> developers be using commercial components? Might it be that the C# binding
> fell into disrepair and no one can or wants to fix it before using it in
> their own apps?

I have absolutely no idea.

I'm spending my (lib)curl days working hard to make curl and libcurl work
exactly as they are supposed to and I tweak and improve the general library
and its API. I don't work on any of the bindings since, quite frankly, I don't
have a need for any of them myself and I think my time is already filled up
with work in the underlying stuff. If libcurl only isn't enough, I am
maintainer and I try to keep things fine and dandy in the c-ares and libssh2
projects too (for the benefit of curl of course!)

But, given that there are frequent changes to libcurl and updates to what
curl_easy_setopt options there are etc, any binding will have to keep at their
toes and keep up with us to maintain a level of funtionality that libcurl
itself provides. It takes some dedicates and at least some time and energy.

I don't know why some bindings are more actively developed and used than
others. I guess it mostly boils down to the nature of the particular
communities for which the binding is for. Like how java peple want everything
native java, or how perl people want things native perl. Or perhaps that the
different environments have their own native alternatives that fit better into
the languages or are of various qualities that makes [a binding for] libcurl a
less compelling alternative.

Or something else. All bindings are authored and maintained outside of the
cURL project so I really have no more insights into them than anyone else.

> Personally, as a C# developer, I think it's a shame that it's not
> used more.

Open source is mostly driven by scratch-your-own-itch so I figure this is then
a chance for you to step forward and start helping with the c# binding for
libcurl!

-- 
  / daniel.haxx.se
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