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Things that could be nice to do in the future
Things to do in project curl. Please tell us what you think, contribute and
send us patches that improve things.
Be aware that these are things that we could do, or have once been considered
things we could do. If you want to work on any of these areas, please
consider bringing it up for discussions first on the mailing list so that we
all agree it is still a good idea for the project.
All bugs documented in the KNOWN_BUGS document are subject for fixing.
1. libcurl
1.1 TFO support on Windows
1.2 Consult %APPDATA% also for .netrc
1.3 struct lifreq
1.4 alt-svc sharing
1.5 get rid of PATH_MAX
1.6 native IDN support on macOS
1.7 Support HTTP/2 for HTTP(S) proxies
1.8 CURLOPT_RESOLVE for any port number
1.9 Cache negative name resolves
1.10 auto-detect proxy
1.11 minimize dependencies with dynamically loaded modules
1.12 updated DNS server while running
1.13 c-ares and CURLOPT_OPENSOCKETFUNCTION
1.15 Monitor connections in the connection pool
1.16 Try to URL encode given URL
1.17 Add support for IRIs
1.18 try next proxy if one does not work
1.19 provide timing info for each redirect
1.20 SRV and URI DNS records
1.21 netrc caching and sharing
1.22 CURLINFO_PAUSE_STATE
1.23 Offer API to flush the connection pool
1.25 Expose tried IP addresses that failed
1.28 FD_CLOEXEC
1.29 Upgrade to websockets
1.30 config file parsing
1.31 erase secrets from heap/stack after use
1.32 add asynch getaddrinfo support
2. libcurl - multi interface
2.1 More non-blocking
2.2 Better support for same name resolves
2.3 Non-blocking curl_multi_remove_handle()
2.4 Split connect and authentication process
2.5 Edge-triggered sockets should work
2.6 multi upkeep
2.7 Virtual external sockets
2.8 dynamically decide to use socketpair
3. Documentation
3.1 Improve documentation about fork safety
3.2 Provide cmake config-file
4. FTP
4.1 HOST
4.2 Alter passive/active on failure and retry
4.3 Earlier bad letter detection
4.4 Support CURLOPT_PREQUOTE for dir listings too
4.5 ASCII support
4.6 GSSAPI via Windows SSPI
4.7 STAT for LIST without data connection
5. HTTP
5.1 Provide the error body from a CONNECT response
5.2 Set custom client ip when using haproxy protocol
5.3 Rearrange request header order
5.4 Allow SAN names in HTTP/2 server push
5.5 auth= in URLs
5.6 alt-svc should fallback if alt-svc does not work
5.7 Require HTTP version X or higher
6. TELNET
6.1 ditch stdin
6.2 ditch telnet-specific select
6.3 feature negotiation debug data
6.4 exit immediately upon connection if stdin is /dev/null
7. SMTP
7.1 Passing NOTIFY option to CURLOPT_MAIL_RCPT
7.2 Enhanced capability support
7.3 Add CURLOPT_MAIL_CLIENT option
8. POP3
8.2 Enhanced capability support
9. IMAP
9.1 Enhanced capability support
10. LDAP
10.1 SASL based authentication mechanisms
10.2 CURLOPT_SSL_CTX_FUNCTION for LDAPS
10.3 Paged searches on LDAP server
11. SMB
11.1 File listing support
11.2 Honor file timestamps
11.3 Use NTLMv2
11.4 Create remote directories
12. FILE
12.1 Directory listing for FILE:
13. TLS
13.1 TLS-PSK with OpenSSL
13.2 Provide mutex locking API
13.3 Defeat TLS fingerprinting
13.4 Cache/share OpenSSL contexts
13.5 Export session ids
13.6 Provide callback for cert verification
13.7 Less memory massaging with Schannel
13.8 Support DANE
13.9 TLS record padding
13.10 Support Authority Information Access certificate extension (AIA)
13.11 Support intermediate & root pinning for PINNEDPUBLICKEY
13.12 Reduce CA certificate bundle reparsing
13.13 Make sure we forbid TLS 1.3 post-handshake authentication
13.14 Support the clienthello extension
14. GnuTLS
14.2 check connection
15. Schannel
15.1 Extend support for client certificate authentication
15.2 Extend support for the --ciphers option
15.4 Add option to allow abrupt server closure
16. SASL
16.1 Other authentication mechanisms
16.2 Add QOP support to GSSAPI authentication
17. SSH protocols
17.1 Multiplexing
17.2 Handle growing SFTP files
17.3 Read keys from ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa, id_ed25519
17.4 Support CURLOPT_PREQUOTE
17.5 SSH over HTTPS proxy with more backends
17.6 SFTP with SCP://
18. Command line tool
18.1 sync
18.2 glob posts
18.4 --proxycommand
18.5 UTF-8 filenames in Content-Disposition
18.6 Option to make -Z merge lined based outputs on stdout
18.8 Consider convenience options for JSON and XML?
18.9 Choose the name of file in braces for complex URLs
18.10 improve how curl works in a windows console window
18.11 Windows: set attribute 'archive' for completed downloads
18.12 keep running, read instructions from pipe/socket
18.13 Ratelimit or wait between serial requests
18.14 --dry-run
18.15 --retry should resume
18.16 send only part of --data
18.17 consider file name from the redirected URL with -O ?
18.18 retry on network is unreachable
18.19 expand ~/ in config files
18.20 host name sections in config files
18.21 retry on the redirected-to URL
18.23 Set the modification date on an uploaded file
18.24 Use multiple parallel transfers for a single download
18.25 Prevent terminal injection when writing to terminal
18.26 Custom progress meter update interval
19. Build
19.1 roffit
19.2 Enable PIE and RELRO by default
19.3 Do not use GNU libtool on OpenBSD
19.4 Package curl for Windows in a signed installer
19.5 make configure use --cache-file more and better
20. Test suite
20.1 SSL tunnel
20.2 nicer lacking perl message
20.3 more protocols supported
20.4 more platforms supported
20.5 Add support for concurrent connections
20.6 Use the RFC6265 test suite
20.7 Support LD_PRELOAD on macOS
20.8 Run web-platform-tests URL tests
21. MQTT
21.1 Support rate-limiting
==============================================================================
1. libcurl
1.1 TFO support on Windows
libcurl supports the CURLOPT_TCP_FASTOPEN option since 7.49.0 for Linux and
Mac OS. Windows supports TCP Fast Open starting with Windows 10, version 1607
and we should add support for it.
TCP Fast Open is supported on several platforms but not on Windows. Work on
this was once started but never finished.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/3378
1.2 Consult %APPDATA% also for .netrc
%APPDATA%\.netrc is not considered when running on Windows. should not it?
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4016
1.3 struct lifreq
Use 'struct lifreq' and SIOCGLIFADDR instead of 'struct ifreq' and
SIOCGIFADDR on newer Solaris versions as they claim the latter is obsolete.
To support IPv6 interface addresses for network interfaces properly.
1.4 alt-svc sharing
The share interface could benefit from allowing the alt-svc cache to be
possible to share between easy handles.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4476
1.5 get rid of PATH_MAX
Having code use and rely on PATH_MAX is not nice:
https://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2007/11/pathmax-simply-isnt.html
Currently the libssh2 SSH based code uses it, but to remove PATH_MAX from
there we need libssh2 to properly tell us when we pass in a too small buffer
and its current API (as of libssh2 1.2.7) does not.
1.6 native IDN support on macOS
On recent macOS versions, the getaddrinfo() function itself has built-in IDN
support. By setting the AI_CANONNAME flag, the function will return the
encoded name in the ai_canonname struct field in the returned information.
This could be used by curl on macOS when built without a separate IDN library
and an IDN host name is used in a URL.
See initial work in https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/5371
1.7 Support HTTP/2 for HTTP(S) proxies
Support for doing HTTP/2 to HTTP and HTTPS proxies is still missing.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3570
1.8 CURLOPT_RESOLVE for any port number
This option allows applications to set a replacement IP address for a given
host + port pair. Consider making support for providing a replacement address
for the host name on all port numbers.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1264
1.9 Cache negative name resolves
A name resolve that has failed is likely to fail when made again within a
short period of time. Currently we only cache positive responses.
1.10 auto-detect proxy
libcurl could be made to detect the system proxy setup automatically and use
that. On Windows, macOS and Linux desktops for example.
The pull-request to use libproxy for this was deferred due to doubts on the
reliability of the dependency and how to use it:
https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/977
libdetectproxy is a (C++) library for detecting the proxy on Windows
https://github.com/paulharris/libdetectproxy
1.11 minimize dependencies with dynamically loaded modules
We can create a system with loadable modules/plug-ins, where these modules
would be the ones that link to 3rd party libs. That would allow us to avoid
having to load ALL dependencies since only the necessary ones for this
app/invoke/used protocols would be necessary to load. See
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/349
1.12 updated DNS server while running
If /etc/resolv.conf gets updated while a program using libcurl is running, it
is may cause name resolves to fail unless res_init() is called. We should
consider calling res_init() + retry once unconditionally on all name resolve
failures to mitigate against this. Firefox works like that. Note that Windows
does not have res_init() or an alternative.
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2251
1.13 c-ares and CURLOPT_OPENSOCKETFUNCTION
curl will create most sockets via the CURLOPT_OPENSOCKETFUNCTION callback and
close them with the CURLOPT_CLOSESOCKETFUNCTION callback. However, c-ares
does not use those functions and instead opens and closes the sockets
itself. This means that when curl passes the c-ares socket to the
CURLMOPT_SOCKETFUNCTION it is not owned by the application like other sockets.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2734
1.15 Monitor connections in the connection pool
libcurl's connection cache or pool holds a number of open connections for the
purpose of possible subsequent connection reuse. It may contain a few up to a
significant amount of connections. Currently, libcurl leaves all connections
as they are and first when a connection is iterated over for matching or
reuse purpose it is verified that it is still alive.
Those connections may get closed by the server side for idleness or they may
get an HTTP/2 ping from the peer to verify that they are still alive. By
adding monitoring of the connections while in the pool, libcurl can detect
dead connections (and close them) better and earlier, and it can handle
HTTP/2 pings to keep such ones alive even when not actively doing transfers
on them.
1.16 Try to URL encode given URL
Given a URL that for example contains spaces, libcurl could have an option
that would try somewhat harder than it does now and convert spaces to %20 and
perhaps URL encoded byte values over 128 etc (basically do what the redirect
following code already does).
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/514
1.17 Add support for IRIs
IRIs (RFC 3987) allow localized, non-ascii, names in the URL. To properly
support this, curl/libcurl would need to translate/encode the given input
from the input string encoding into percent encoded output "over the wire".
To make that work smoothly for curl users even on Windows, curl would
probably need to be able to convert from several input encodings.
1.18 try next proxy if one does not work
Allow an application to specify a list of proxies to try, and failing to
connect to the first go on and try the next instead until the list is
exhausted. Browsers support this feature at least when they specify proxies
using PACs.
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/896
1.19 provide timing info for each redirect
curl and libcurl provide timing information via a set of different
time-stamps (CURLINFO_*_TIME). When curl is following redirects, those
returned time value are the accumulated sums. An improvement could be to
offer separate timings for each redirect.
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/6743
1.20 SRV and URI DNS records
Offer support for resolving SRV and URI DNS records for libcurl to know which
server to connect to for various protocols (including HTTP).
1.21 netrc caching and sharing
The netrc file is read and parsed each time a connection is setup, which
means that if a transfer needs multiple connections for authentication or
redirects, the file might be reread (and parsed) multiple times. This makes
it impossible to provide the file as a pipe.
1.22 CURLINFO_PAUSE_STATE
Return information about the transfer's current pause state, in both
directions. https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2588
1.23 Offer API to flush the connection pool
Sometimes applications want to flush all the existing connections kept alive.
An API could allow a forced flush or just a forced loop that would properly
close all connections that have been closed by the server already.
1.25 Expose tried IP addresses that failed
When libcurl fails to connect to a host, it could offer the application the
addresses that were used in the attempt. Source + dest IP, source + dest port
and protocol (UDP or TCP) for each failure. Possibly as a callback. Perhaps
also provide "reason".
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2126
1.28 FD_CLOEXEC
It sets the close-on-exec flag for the file descriptor, which causes the file
descriptor to be automatically (and atomically) closed when any of the
exec-family functions succeed. Should probably be set by default?
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2252
1.29 Upgrade to websockets
libcurl could offer a smoother path to get to a websocket connection.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3523
Michael Kaufmann suggestion here:
https://curl.se/video/curlup-2017/2017-03-19_05_Michael_Kaufmann_Websocket_support_for_curl.mp4
1.30 config file parsing
Consider providing an API, possibly in a separate companion library, for
parsing a config file like curl's -K/--config option to allow applications to
get the same ability to read curl options from files.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3698
1.31 erase secrets from heap/stack after use
Introducing a concept and system to erase secrets from memory after use, it
could help mitigate and lessen the impact of (future) security problems etc.
However: most secrets are passed to libcurl as clear text from the
application and then clearing them within the library adds nothing...
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/7268
1.32 add asynch getaddrinfo support
Use getaddrinfo_a() to provide an asynch name resolver backend to libcurl
that does not use threads and does not depend on c-ares. The getaddrinfo_a
function is (probably?) glibc specific but that is a widely used libc among
our users.
https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/6746
2. libcurl - multi interface
2.1 More non-blocking
Make sure we do not ever loop because of non-blocking sockets returning
EWOULDBLOCK or similar. Blocking cases include:
- Name resolves on non-windows unless c-ares or the threaded resolver is used.
- The threaded resolver may block on cleanup:
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4852
- file:// transfers
- TELNET transfers
- GSSAPI authentication for FTP transfers
- The "DONE" operation (post transfer protocol-specific actions) for the
protocols SFTP, SMTP, FTP. Fixing multi_done() for this is a worthy task.
- curl_multi_remove_handle for any of the above. See section 2.3.
2.2 Better support for same name resolves
If a name resolve has been initiated for name NN and a second easy handle
wants to resolve that name as well, make it wait for the first resolve to end
up in the cache instead of doing a second separate resolve. This is
especially needed when adding many simultaneous handles using the same host
name when the DNS resolver can get flooded.
2.3 Non-blocking curl_multi_remove_handle()
The multi interface has a few API calls that assume a blocking behavior, like
add_handle() and remove_handle() which limits what we can do internally. The
multi API need to be moved even more into a single function that "drives"
everything in a non-blocking manner and signals when something is done. A
remove or add would then only ask for the action to get started and then
multi_perform() etc still be called until the add/remove is completed.
2.4 Split connect and authentication process
The multi interface treats the authentication process as part of the connect
phase. As such any failures during authentication will not trigger the relevant
QUIT or LOGOFF for protocols such as IMAP, POP3 and SMTP.
2.5 Edge-triggered sockets should work
The multi_socket API should work with edge-triggered socket events. One of
the internal actions that need to be improved for this to work perfectly is
the 'maxloops' handling in transfer.c:readwrite_data().
2.6 multi upkeep
In libcurl 7.62.0 we introduced curl_easy_upkeep. It unfortunately only works
on easy handles. We should introduces a version of that for the multi handle,
and also consider doing "upkeep" automatically on connections in the
connection pool when the multi handle is in used.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3199
2.7 Virtual external sockets
libcurl performs operations on the given file descriptor that presumes it is
a socket and an application cannot replace them at the moment. Allowing an
application to fully replace those would allow a larger degree of freedom and
flexibility.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5835
2.8 dynamically decide to use socketpair
For users who do not use curl_multi_wait() or do not care for
curl_multi_wakeup(), we could introduce a way to make libcurl NOT
create a socketpair in the multi handle.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4829
3. Documentation
3.1 Improve documentation about fork safety
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/6968
3.2 Provide cmake config-file
A config-file package is a set of files provided by us to allow applications
to write cmake scripts to find and use libcurl easier. See
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/885
4. FTP
4.1 HOST
HOST is a command for a client to tell which host name to use, to offer FTP
servers named-based virtual hosting:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7151
4.2 Alter passive/active on failure and retry
When trying to connect passively to a server which only supports active
connections, libcurl returns CURLE_FTP_WEIRD_PASV_REPLY and closes the
connection. There could be a way to fallback to an active connection (and
vice versa). https://curl.se/bug/feature.cgi?id=1754793
4.3 Earlier bad letter detection
Make the detection of (bad) %0d and %0a codes in FTP URL parts earlier in the
process to avoid doing a resolve and connect in vain.
4.4 Support CURLOPT_PREQUOTE for dir listings too
The lack of support is mostly an oversight and requires the FTP state machine
to get updated to get fixed.
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/8602
4.5 ASCII support
FTP ASCII transfers do not follow RFC959. They do not convert the data
accordingly.
4.6 GSSAPI via Windows SSPI
In addition to currently supporting the SASL GSSAPI mechanism (Kerberos V5)
via third-party GSS-API libraries, such as Heimdal or MIT Kerberos, also add
support for GSSAPI authentication via Windows SSPI.
4.7 STAT for LIST without data connection
Some FTP servers allow STAT for listing directories instead of using LIST,
and the response is then sent over the control connection instead of as the
otherwise usedw data connection: https://www.nsftools.com/tips/RawFTP.htm#STAT
This is not detailed in any FTP specification.
5. HTTP
5.1 Provide the error body from a CONNECT response
When curl receives a body response from a CONNECT request to a proxy, it will
always just read and ignore it. It would make some users happy if curl
instead optionally would be able to make that responsible available. Via a new
callback? Through some other means?
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/9513
5.2 Set custom client ip when using haproxy protocol
This would allow testing servers with different client ip addresses (without
using x-forward-for header).
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5125
5.3 Rearrange request header order
Server implementors often make an effort to detect browser and to reject
clients it can detect to not match. One of the last details we cannot yet
control in libcurl's HTTP requests, which also can be exploited to detect
that libcurl is in fact used even when it tries to impersonate a browser, is
the order of the request headers. I propose that we introduce a new option in
which you give headers a value, and then when the HTTP request is built it
sorts the headers based on that number. We could then have internally created
headers use a default value so only headers that need to be moved have to be
specified.
5.4 Allow SAN names in HTTP/2 server push
curl only allows HTTP/2 push promise if the provided :authority header value
exactly matches the host name given in the URL. It could be extended to allow
any name that would match the Subject Alternative Names in the server's TLS
certificate.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/3581
5.5 auth= in URLs
Add the ability to specify the preferred authentication mechanism to use by
using ;auth=<mech> in the login part of the URL.
For example:
http://test:pass;auth=NTLM@example.com would be equivalent to specifying
--user test:pass;auth=NTLM or --user test:pass --ntlm from the command line.
Additionally this should be implemented for proxy base URLs as well.
5.6 alt-svc should fallback if alt-svc does not work
The alt-svc: header provides a set of alternative services for curl to use
instead of the original. If the first attempted one fails, it should try the
next etc and if all alternatives fail go back to the original.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4908
5.7 Require HTTP version X or higher
curl and libcurl provide options for trying higher HTTP versions (for example
HTTP/2) but then still allows the server to pick version 1.1. We could
consider adding a way to require a minimum version.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/7980
6. TELNET
6.1 ditch stdin
Reading input (to send to the remote server) on stdin is a crappy solution
for library purposes. We need to invent a good way for the application to be
able to provide the data to send.
6.2 ditch telnet-specific select
Move the telnet support's network select() loop go away and merge the code
into the main transfer loop. Until this is done, the multi interface will not
work for telnet.
6.3 feature negotiation debug data
Add telnet feature negotiation data to the debug callback as header data.
6.4 exit immediately upon connection if stdin is /dev/null
If it did, curl could be used to probe if there's an server there listening
on a specific port. That is, the following command would exit immediately
after the connection is established with exit code 0:
curl -s --connect-timeout 2 telnet://example.com:80 </dev/null
7. SMTP
7.1 Passing NOTIFY option to CURLOPT_MAIL_RCPT
Is there a way to pass the NOTIFY option to the CURLOPT_MAIL_RCPT option ? I
set a string that already contains a bracket. For instance something like
that: curl_slist_append( recipients, "<foo@bar> NOTIFY=SUCCESS,FAILURE" );
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/8232
7.2 Enhanced capability support
Add the ability, for an application that uses libcurl, to obtain the list of
capabilities returned from the EHLO command.
7.3 Add CURLOPT_MAIL_CLIENT option
Rather than use the URL to specify the mail client string to present in the
HELO and EHLO commands, libcurl should support a new CURLOPT specifically for
specifying this data as the URL is non-standard and to be honest a bit of a
hack ;-)
Please see the following thread for more information:
https://curl.se/mail/lib-2012-05/0178.html
8. POP3
8.2 Enhanced capability support
Add the ability, for an application that uses libcurl, to obtain the list of
capabilities returned from the CAPA command.
9. IMAP
9.1 Enhanced capability support
Add the ability, for an application that uses libcurl, to obtain the list of
capabilities returned from the CAPABILITY command.
10. LDAP
10.1 SASL based authentication mechanisms
Currently the LDAP module only supports ldap_simple_bind_s() in order to bind
to an LDAP server. However, this function sends username and password details
using the simple authentication mechanism (as clear text). However, it should
be possible to use ldap_bind_s() instead specifying the security context
information ourselves.
10.2 CURLOPT_SSL_CTX_FUNCTION for LDAPS
CURLOPT_SSL_CTX_FUNCTION works perfectly for HTTPS and email protocols, but
it has no effect for LDAPS connections.
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4108
10.3 Paged searches on LDAP server
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4452
11. SMB
11.1 File listing support
Add support for listing the contents of a SMB share. The output should
probably be the same as/similar to FTP.
11.2 Honor file timestamps
The timestamp of the transferred file should reflect that of the original
file.
11.3 Use NTLMv2
Currently the SMB authentication uses NTLMv1.
11.4 Create remote directories
Support for creating remote directories when uploading a file to a directory
that does not exist on the server, just like --ftp-create-dirs.
12. FILE
12.1 Directory listing for FILE:
Add support for listing the contents of a directory accessed with FILE. The
output should probably be the same as/similar to FTP.
13. TLS
13.1 TLS-PSK with OpenSSL
Transport Layer Security pre-shared key ciphersuites (TLS-PSK) is a set of
cryptographic protocols that provide secure communication based on pre-shared
keys (PSKs). These pre-shared keys are symmetric keys shared in advance among
the communicating parties.
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5081
13.2 Provide mutex locking API
Provide a libcurl API for setting mutex callbacks in the underlying SSL
library, so that the same application code can use mutex-locking
independently of OpenSSL or GnutTLS being used.
13.3 Defeat TLS fingerprinting
By changing the order of TLS extensions provided in the TLS handshake, it is
sometimes possible to circumvent TLS fingerprinting by servers. The TLS
extension order is of course not the only way to fingerprint a client.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/8119
13.4 Cache/share OpenSSL contexts
"Look at SSL cafile - quick traces look to me like these are done on every
request as well, when they should only be necessary once per SSL context (or
once per handle)". The major improvement we can rather easily do is to make
sure we do not create and kill a new SSL "context" for every request, but
instead make one for every connection and re-use that SSL context in the same
style connections are re-used. It will make us use slightly more memory but
it will libcurl do less creations and deletions of SSL contexts.
Technically, the "caching" is probably best implemented by getting added to
the share interface so that easy handles who want to and can reuse the
context specify that by sharing with the right properties set.
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1110
13.5 Export session ids
Add an interface to libcurl that enables "session IDs" to get
exported/imported. Cris Bailiff said: "OpenSSL has functions which can
serialise the current SSL state to a buffer of your choice, and recover/reset
the state from such a buffer at a later date - this is used by mod_ssl for
apache to implement and SSL session ID cache".
13.6 Provide callback for cert verification
OpenSSL supports a callback for customised verification of the peer
certificate, but this does not seem to be exposed in the libcurl APIs. Could
it be? There's so much that could be done if it were.
13.7 Less memory massaging with Schannel
The Schannel backend does a lot of custom memory management we would rather
avoid: the repeated alloc + free in sends and the custom memory + realloc
system for encrypted and decrypted data. That should be avoided and reduced
for 1) efficiency and 2) safety.
13.8 Support DANE
DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) is a way to provide SSL
keys and certs over DNS using DNSSEC as an alternative to the CA model.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6698.txt
An initial patch was posted by Suresh Krishnaswamy on March 7th 2013
(https://curl.se/mail/lib-2013-03/0075.html) but it was a too simple
approach. See Daniel's comments:
https://curl.se/mail/lib-2013-03/0103.html . libunbound may be the
correct library to base this development on.
Björn Stenberg wrote a separate initial take on DANE that was never
completed.
13.9 TLS record padding
TLS (1.3) offers optional record padding and OpenSSL provides an API for it.
I could make sense for libcurl to offer this ability to applications to make
traffic patterns harder to figure out by network traffic observers.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5398
13.10 Support Authority Information Access certificate extension (AIA)
AIA can provide various things like CRLs but more importantly information
about intermediate CA certificates that can allow validation path to be
fulfilled when the HTTPS server does not itself provide them.
Since AIA is about downloading certs on demand to complete a TLS handshake,
it is probably a bit tricky to get done right.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2793
13.11 Support intermediate & root pinning for PINNEDPUBLICKEY
CURLOPT_PINNEDPUBLICKEY does not consider the hashes of intermediate & root
certificates when comparing the pinned keys. Therefore it is not compatible
with "HTTP Public Key Pinning" as there also intermediate and root
certificates can be pinned. This is useful as it prevents webadmins from
"locking themselves out of their servers".
Adding this feature would make curls pinning 100% compatible to HPKP and
allow more flexible pinning.
13.12 Reduce CA certificate bundle reparsing
When using the OpenSSL backend, curl will load and reparse the CA bundle at
the creation of the "SSL context" when it sets up a connection to do a TLS
handshake. A more effective way would be to somehow cache the CA bundle to
avoid it having to be repeatedly reloaded and reparsed.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/9379
13.13 Make sure we forbid TLS 1.3 post-handshake authentication
RFC 8740 explains how using HTTP/2 must forbid the use of TLS 1.3
post-handshake authentication. We should make sure to live up to that.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5396
13.14 Support the clienthello extension
Certain stupid networks and middle boxes have a problem with SSL handshake
packets that are within a certain size range because how that sets some bits
that previously (in older TLS version) were not set. The clienthello
extension adds padding to avoid that size range.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7685
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2299
14. GnuTLS
14.2 check connection
Add a way to check if the connection seems to be alive, to correspond to the
SSL_peak() way we use with OpenSSL.
15. Schannel
15.1 Extend support for client certificate authentication
The existing support for the -E/--cert and --key options could be
extended by supplying a custom certificate and key in PEM format, see:
- Getting a Certificate for Schannel
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa375447.aspx
15.2 Extend support for the --ciphers option
The existing support for the --ciphers option could be extended
by mapping the OpenSSL/GnuTLS cipher suites to the Schannel APIs, see
- Specifying Schannel Ciphers and Cipher Strengths
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa380161.aspx
15.4 Add option to allow abrupt server closure
libcurl w/schannel will error without a known termination point from the
server (such as length of transfer, or SSL "close notify" alert) to prevent
against a truncation attack. Really old servers may neglect to send any
termination point. An option could be added to ignore such abrupt closures.
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4427
16. SASL
16.1 Other authentication mechanisms
Add support for other authentication mechanisms such as OLP,
GSS-SPNEGO and others.
16.2 Add QOP support to GSSAPI authentication
Currently the GSSAPI authentication only supports the default QOP of auth
(Authentication), whilst Kerberos V5 supports both auth-int (Authentication
with integrity protection) and auth-conf (Authentication with integrity and
privacy protection).
17. SSH protocols
17.1 Multiplexing
SSH is a perfectly fine multiplexed protocols which would allow libcurl to do
multiple parallel transfers from the same host using the same connection,
much in the same spirit as HTTP/2 does. libcurl however does not take
advantage of that ability but will instead always create a new connection for
new transfers even if an existing connection already exists to the host.
To fix this, libcurl would have to detect an existing connection and "attach"
the new transfer to the existing one.
17.2 Handle growing SFTP files
The SFTP code in libcurl checks the file size *before* a transfer starts and
then proceeds to transfer exactly that amount of data. If the remote file
grows while the transfer is in progress libcurl will not notice and will not
adapt. The OpenSSH SFTP command line tool does and libcurl could also just
attempt to download more to see if there is more to get...
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4344
17.3 Read keys from ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa, id_ed25519
The libssh2 backend in curl is limited to only reading keys from id_rsa and
id_dsa, which makes it fail connecting to servers that use more modern key
types.
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/8586
17.4 Support CURLOPT_PREQUOTE
The two other QUOTE options are supported for SFTP, but this was left out for
unknown reasons.
17.5 SSH over HTTPS proxy with more backends
The SSH based protocols SFTP and SCP did not work over HTTPS proxy at
all until PR https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/6021 brought the
functionality with the libssh2 backend. Presumably, this support
can/could be added for the other backends as well.
17.6 SFTP with SCP://
OpenSSH 9 switched their 'scp' tool to speak SFTP under the hood. Going
forward it might be worth having curl or libcurl attempt SFTP if SCP fails to
follow suite.
18. Command line tool
18.1 sync
"curl --sync http://example.com/feed[1-100].rss" or
"curl --sync http://example.net/{index,calendar,history}.html"
Downloads a range or set of URLs using the remote name, but only if the
remote file is newer than the local file. A Last-Modified HTTP date header
should also be used to set the mod date on the downloaded file.
18.2 glob posts
Globbing support for -d and -F, as in 'curl -d "name=foo[0-9]" URL'.
This is easily scripted though.
18.4 --proxycommand
Allow the user to make curl run a command and use its stdio to make requests
and not do any network connection by itself. Example:
curl --proxycommand 'ssh pi@raspberrypi.local -W 10.1.1.75 80' \
http://some/otherwise/unavailable/service.php
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4941
18.5 UTF-8 filenames in Content-Disposition
RFC 6266 documents how UTF-8 names can be passed to a client in the
Content-Disposition header, and curl does not support this.
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1888
18.6 Option to make -Z merge lined based outputs on stdout
When a user requests multiple lined based files using -Z and sends them to
stdout, curl will not "merge" and send complete lines fine but may send
partial lines from several sources.
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5175
18.8 Consider convenience options for JSON and XML?
Could we add `--xml` or `--json` to add headers needed to call rest API:
`--xml` adds -H 'Content-Type: application/xml' -H "Accept: application/xml" and
`--json` adds -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H "Accept: application/json"
Setting Content-Type when doing a GET or any other method without a body
would be a bit strange I think - so maybe only add CT for requests with body?
Maybe plain `--xml` and ` --json` are a bit too brief and generic. Maybe
`--http-json` etc?
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5203
18.9 Choose the name of file in braces for complex URLs
When using braces to download a list of URLs and you use complicated names
in the list of alternatives, it could be handy to allow curl to use other
names when saving.
Consider a way to offer that. Possibly like
{partURL1:name1,partURL2:name2,partURL3:name3} where the name following the
colon is the output name.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/221
18.10 improve how curl works in a windows console window
If you pull the scrollbar when transferring with curl in a Windows console
window, the transfer is interrupted and can get disconnected. This can
probably be improved. See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/322
18.11 Windows: set attribute 'archive' for completed downloads
The archive bit (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ARCHIVE, 0x20) separates files that shall be
backed up from those that are either not ready or have not changed.
Downloads in progress are neither ready to be backed up, nor should they be
opened by a different process. Only after a download has been completed it's
sensible to include it in any integer snapshot or backup of the system.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/3354
18.12 keep running, read instructions from pipe/socket
Provide an option that makes curl not exit after the last URL (or even work
without a given URL), and then make it read instructions passed on a pipe or
over a socket to make further instructions so that a second subsequent curl
invoke can talk to the still running instance and ask for transfers to get
done, and thus maintain its connection pool, DNS cache and more.
18.13 Ratelimit or wait between serial requests
Consider a command line option that can make curl do multiple serial requests
slow, potentially with a (random) wait between transfers. There's also a
proposed set of standard HTTP headers to let servers let the client adapt to
its rate limits:
https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-polli-ratelimit-headers-02.html
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5406
18.14 --dry-run
A command line option that makes curl show exactly what it would do and send
if it would run for real.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5426
18.15 --retry should resume
When --retry is used and curl actually retries transfer, it should use the
already transferred data and do a resumed transfer for the rest (when
possible) so that it does not have to transfer the same data again that was
already transferred before the retry.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1084
18.16 send only part of --data
When the user only wants to send a small piece of the data provided with
--data or --data-binary, like when that data is a huge file, consider a way
to specify that curl should only send a piece of that. One suggested syntax
would be: "--data-binary @largefile.zip!1073741823-2147483647".
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1200
18.17 consider file name from the redirected URL with -O ?
When a user gives a URL and uses -O, and curl follows a redirect to a new
URL, the file name is not extracted and used from the newly redirected-to URL
even if the new URL may have a much more sensible file name.
This is clearly documented and helps for security since there's no surprise
to users which file name that might get overwritten. But maybe a new option
could allow for this or maybe -J should imply such a treatment as well as -J
already allows for the server to decide what file name to use so it already
provides the "may overwrite any file" risk.
This is extra tricky if the original URL has no file name part at all since
then the current code path will error out with an error message, and we cannot
*know* already at that point if curl will be redirected to a URL that has a
file name...
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1241
18.18 retry on network is unreachable
The --retry option retries transfers on "transient failures". We later added
--retry-connrefused to also retry for "connection refused" errors.
Suggestions have been brought to also allow retry on "network is unreachable"
errors and while totally reasonable, maybe we should consider a way to make
this more configurable than to add a new option for every new error people
want to retry for?
https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/1603
18.19 expand ~/ in config files
For example .curlrc could benefit from being able to do this.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/2317
18.20 host name sections in config files
config files would be more powerful if they could set different
configurations depending on used URLs, host name or possibly origin. Then a
default .curlrc could a specific user-agent only when doing requests against
a certain site.
18.21 retry on the redirected-to URL
When curl is told to --retry a failed transfer and follows redirects, it
might get an HTTP 429 response from the redirected-to URL and not the
original one, which then could make curl decide to rather retry the transfer
on that URL only instead of the original operation to the original URL.
Perhaps extra emphasized if the original transfer is a large POST that
redirects to a separate GET, and that GET is what gets the 529
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5462
18.23 Set the modification date on an uploaded file
For SFTP and possibly FTP, curl could offer an option to set the
modification time for the uploaded file.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5768
18.24 Use multiple parallel transfers for a single download
To enhance transfer speed, downloading a single URL can be split up into
multiple separate range downloads that get combined into a single final
result.
An ideal implementation would not use a specified number of parallel
transfers, but curl could:
- First start getting the full file as transfer A
- If after N seconds have passed and the transfer is expected to continue for
M seconds or more, add a new transfer (B) that asks for the second half of
A's content (and stop A at the middle).
- If splitting up the work improves the transfer rate, it could then be done
again. Then again, etc up to a limit.
This way, if transfer B fails (because Range: is not supported) it will let
transfer A remain the single one. N and M could be set to some sensible
defaults.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5774
18.25 Prevent terminal injection when writing to terminal
curl could offer an option to make escape sequence either non-functional or
avoid cursor moves or similar to reduce the risk of a user getting tricked by
clever tricks.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/6150
18.26 Custom progress meter update interval
Users who are for example doing large downloads in CI or remote setups might
want the occasional progress meter update to see that the transfer is
progressing and has not stuck, but they may not appreciate the
many-times-a-second frequency curl can end up doing it with now.
19. Build
19.1 roffit
Consider extending 'roffit' to produce decent ASCII output, and use that
instead of (g)nroff when building src/tool_hugehelp.c
19.2 Enable PIE and RELRO by default
Especially when having programs that execute curl via the command line, PIE
renders the exploitation of memory corruption vulnerabilities a lot more
difficult. This can be attributed to the additional information leaks being
required to conduct a successful attack. RELRO, on the other hand, masks
different binary sections like the GOT as read-only and thus kills a handful
of techniques that come in handy when attackers are able to arbitrarily
overwrite memory. A few tests showed that enabling these features had close
to no impact, neither on the performance nor on the general functionality of
curl.
19.3 Do not use GNU libtool on OpenBSD
When compiling curl on OpenBSD with "--enable-debug" it will give linking
errors when you use GNU libtool. This can be fixed by using the libtool
provided by OpenBSD itself. However for this the user always needs to invoke
make with "LIBTOOL=/usr/bin/libtool". It would be nice if the script could
have some magic to detect if this system is an OpenBSD host and then use the
OpenBSD libtool instead.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5862
19.4 Package curl for Windows in a signed installer
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/5424
19.5 make configure use --cache-file more and better
The configure script can be improved to cache more values so that repeated
invokes run much faster.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/7753
20. Test suite
20.1 SSL tunnel
Make our own version of stunnel for simple port forwarding to enable HTTPS
and FTP-SSL tests without the stunnel dependency, and it could allow us to
provide test tools built with either OpenSSL or GnuTLS
20.2 nicer lacking perl message
If perl was not found by the configure script, do not attempt to run the tests
but explain something nice why it does not.
20.3 more protocols supported
Extend the test suite to include more protocols. The telnet could just do FTP
or http operations (for which we have test servers).
20.4 more platforms supported
Make the test suite work on more platforms. OpenBSD and Mac OS. Remove
fork()s and it should become even more portable.
20.5 Add support for concurrent connections
Tests 836, 882 and 938 were designed to verify that separate connections
are not used when using different login credentials in protocols that
should not re-use a connection under such circumstances.
Unfortunately, ftpserver.pl does not appear to support multiple concurrent
connections. The read while() loop seems to loop until it receives a
disconnect from the client, where it then enters the waiting for connections
loop. When the client opens a second connection to the server, the first
connection has not been dropped (unless it has been forced - which we
should not do in these tests) and thus the wait for connections loop is never
entered to receive the second connection.
20.6 Use the RFC6265 test suite
A test suite made for HTTP cookies (RFC 6265) by Adam Barth is available at
https://github.com/abarth/http-state/tree/master/tests
It'd be really awesome if someone would write a script/setup that would run
curl with that test suite and detect deviances. Ideally, that would even be
incorporated into our regular test suite.
20.7 Support LD_PRELOAD on macOS
LD_RELOAD does not work on macOS, but there are tests which require it to run
properly. Look into making the preload support in runtests.pl portable such
that it uses DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES on macOS.
20.8 Run web-platform-tests URL tests
Run web-platform-tests URL tests and compare results with browsers on wpt.fyi
It would help us find issues to fix and help us document where our parser
differs from the WHATWG URL spec parsers.
See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/4477
21. MQTT
21.1 Support rate-limiting
The rate-limiting logic is done in the PERFORMING state in multi.c but MQTT
is not (yet) implemented to use that.
Mini Shell