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Re: Shipping wcurl in curl tarballs?

From: Daniel Stenberg via curl-library <curl-library_at_lists.haxx.se>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2025 15:56:35 +0100 (CET)

On Sun, 9 Feb 2025, Samuel Henrique via curl-library wrote:

> I would like to understand where you stand on the idea of shipping wcurl
> bundled in the curl release tarball.

As wcurl is a small and simple script that is not expected to change rapidly,
it would be a no-brainer to just add it to the release tarball from a purely
technical perspective.

I have been thinking about this a lot recently. Going back on forth in my head
on what I think is the right route.

While easy to do, an important question remains:

   Is it the *right* thing to do?

wcurl *is* a decently separate independent script with its own release
schedule, separate git repository and even team of maintainers. It is not
clear that it actually belongs in a curl release tarball. Even though I too
think and realize it would help adoption if it were bundled.

What I think further complicates the matter: I know that there is talk and
perhaps even plans, to make a wcurl implementation in C (or rust?) one day
that compiles against libcurl to A) give it more powers to do things that are
hard to realize in the current shell script version and B) make it independent
of shells and thus make it run on more platforms.

If we imagine that the plans work out and such an incarnation of wcurl
appears; it feels instinctively wrong to bundle that version with curl. And
maybe if it does appear and we already while wcurl with curl, does that
perhaps makes things even more complicated for users than otherwise?

So maybe we save ourselves from further complications by not bundling it?

-- 
  / daniel.haxx.se || https://rock-solid.curl.dev
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Received on 2025-02-18