curl/packages
Daniel Stenberg 265b14d6b3
metalink: remove
Warning: this will make existing curl command lines that use metalink to
stop working.

Reasons for removal:

1. We've found several security problems and issues involving the
   metalink support in curl. The issues are not detailed here. When
   working on those, it become apparent to the team that several of the
   problems are due to the system design, metalink library API and what
   the metalink RFC says. They are very hard to fix on the curl side
   only.

2. The metalink usage with curl was only very briefly documented and was
   not following the "normal" curl usage pattern in several ways, making
   it surprising and non-intuitive which could lead to further security
   issues.

3. The metalink library was last updated 6 years ago and wasn't so
   active the years before that either. An unmaintained library means
   there's a security problem waiting to happen. This is probably reason
   enough.

4. Metalink requires an XML parsing library, which is complex code (even
   the smaller alternatives) and to this day often gets security
   updates.

5. Metalink is not a widely used curl feature. In the 2020 curl user
   survey, only 1.4% of the responders said that they'd are using it. In
   2021 that number was 1.2%. Searching the web also show very few
   traces of it being used, even with other tools.

6. The torrent format and associated technology clearly won for
   downloading large files from multiple sources in parallel.

Cloes #7176
2021-06-07 08:14:25 +02:00
..
Android curl.se: new home 2020-11-04 23:59:47 +01:00
DOS copyright: fix missing year (range) updates 2021-01-29 14:35:13 +01:00
OS400 ccsidcurl: fix the compile errors 2021-05-26 23:36:22 +02:00
TPF curl.se: new home 2020-11-04 23:59:47 +01:00
vms metalink: remove 2021-06-07 08:14:25 +02:00
Makefile.am curl.se: new home 2020-11-04 23:59:47 +01:00
README

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PACKAGES

 This directory and all its subdirectories are for special package
information, template, scripts and docs. The files herein should be of use for
those of you who want to package curl in a binary or source format using one
of those custom formats.

 The hierarchy for these directories is something like this:

   packages/[OS]/[FORMAT]/

 Currently, we have Win32 and Linux for [OS]. There might be different formats
for the same OS so for Linux we have RPM as format.

 We might need to add some differentiation for CPU as well, as there is
Linux-RPMs for several CPUs. However, it might not be necessary since the
packaging should be pretty much the same no matter what CPU that is used.

 For each unique OS-FORMAT pair, there's a directory to "fill"! I'd like to
see a single README with as much details as possible, and then I'd like some
template files for the package process.