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Re: Feature Proposal: Support for additional environment variables for proxy authentication in libcurl

From: Daniel Stenberg via curl-library <curl-library_at_lists.haxx.se>
Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2024 14:17:01 +0200 (CEST)

On Thu, 8 Aug 2024, Jörn Franke via curl-library wrote:

> Currently, libcurl provides environment variables to configure a proxy

...

> It would be nice if curl could expose an environment variable
> [scheme]_proxyauth the option CURL_PROXYAUTH

The general consensus is that environment variables is a quirky and unfriendly
way to control functionality. A bad API. It also adds confusion when there are
environment variables saying one thing and an API is used to say something
else.

The proxy environment variables libcurl supports were invented in the 90s and
they were already in use by others at the time - which is why curl supports
them. I am not at all convinced that inventing new proxy environment variables
in 2024 that are curl specific is an awesome idea.

If I could go back in time, I think maybe I would argue that curl should read
the environment variables and pass them on to libcurl using the normal API.
Bindings and libcurl users can do just that for any additional environment
variables they think should be accepted.

Finally: if a libcurl using application sets CURL_PROXYAUTH to a set of
acceptable methods (more than one), libcurl will probe the server and use a
method that the site accepts and that libcurl works with - ie not go with just
Basic or similar. This does at least somewhat take away the need for a user to
be specific about it.

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Received on 2024-08-09