On Fri, 15 Jun 2012, Anthony Bryan wrote:

> Daniel,
>
> do you want Metalink/HTTP support off by default, even though it will not
> have other dependencies (like libmetalink for XML), just the usual crypto
> libs for hash verification used by other features if available?

I want metalink to be noticed and included in the build if configure detects
things by itself. I don't want curl to automatically ask for and do metalink
downloads unless --metalink is used since I think that is in line with how
curl generally work with features and things.

And it works like this already!

> thinking about it, do we want a --metalinkoff or equivalent so you could
> download a metalink file but not process it or turn off Metalink/HTTP?

As it isn't enabled by default in requests even when enabled in the build, it
will by default only download the actual metalink resource.

> also, let me sum up where we are now. things left undone:
>
> 1) Metalink/XML support triggered by metalink4 Content-Type
> 2) Metalink/XML support triggered by HTTP Link header field (as
> mentioned in RFC 6249)
> 3) Metalink/HTTP (RFC 6249)
> 4) NSS for hash verification. could someone help with this?
> 5) parallel downloads (as mentioned on your blog). could be nice.
> 6) use of partial file hashes from Metalink/XML to re-download a part
> of the file if it contains errors (I don't think the current patches
> support this).
> 7) I also need to update some of the documentation

Thanks for this list. I'm sure Tatsuhiro will agree with me when I say that we
will appreciate all the help we can get in working on these issues.

Issue number (5) from the list ("parallel downloads") is somewhat largish and
has been discussed for general curl downloads in the past and would benefit
all kinds of downloads - in addition to the metalink ones.

-- 
  / daniel.haxx.se
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