On Wed, 25 Oct 2006, Sharon Shaanan wrote:

> Your decision to remove the 3rd party functionality was very surprising and
> won't allow us to keep upgrading the libCurl .
>
> Can you pls explain why you removed the 3rd party FTP (I will continue to
> support it, instead of Alex). and pls let me know if the decision can be
> undone.

I started asking about anyone wanting the 3rd party FTP support on September
13th, and not a single soul have voiced support for it until you did now. I'm
sorry and it may seem harsh, but I'm not reverting that decision.

My decision to remove 3rd party transfer support from the FTP code is based on
multiple reasons:

o It is hardly used. Out of the 400+ subscribers on the list, *none* replied
   saying they use/like/want it, in over a month's time.

o The third party transfers had a lot of code in lib/ftp.c that was used only
   for third party transfers and not for the generic FTP, and thus it was a lot
   of code for very few users.

o The code used for third party transfers was blocking and as such deemed
   "ugly" by our standards.

o There's no coders around willing to provide support and adjust the code to
   better comply to the way we want it done.

o The third party transfers did not do FTP transfers in the same (flexible)
   way as the standard FTP transfers do, like it didn't support the same
   approach to EPSV/EPRT etc.

o Perhaps most importantly, when I fiddled with the adding of pipelining and
   more in the current development of the next release, the test cases for the
   third party FTP transfers broke and I had to decide how to proceed. Either
   fix the code or rip it out. You know which route I took...

As I've said before, and I can repeat it again, third party support as a
concept is not banned from libcurl due to this, it is just banned in the shape
it used to be.

If you want third party transfers support back in libcurl it can indeed be
made so, but it would have to:

1 - be non-blocking

2 - better re-use existing functions

If you're up to doing this, then I'll of course assist but you would need to
step up and provide code.

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