/pidgin/main: e6c37a5e6666: New dependency: libcurl

[Mark Doliner]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 8:18 AM, Elliott Sales de Andrade
<qulogic at pidgin.im> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 4:31 AM, Tomasz Wasilczyk
> <tomkiewicz.groups at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> New dependency: libcurl
>
> When did we decide to use libcurl over libsoup?

I'm definitely in favor of using a 3rd party http library.  These two
seem like the best candidates (but if anyone knows of another good
one, feel free to suggest it).  I've never been a fan of libcurl's
API.  I haven't used libsoup--maybe it's no better.

Are we sure we can use libcurl on Windows without too much work?

>>> Adding libcurl, do we want to rework our HTTP utility functions to
>>> simply wrap libcurl?  They could automatically become more robust, but I
>>> am curious whether we care.
>>
>> I think so. But at first, I plan to write curl-specific wrapper:
>> functions like purple_curl_* to initialize curl handler (tie into
>> purple event loop), watch it and so on.
>
> If we're still going to have our HTTP functions, then I don't see why
> this needs to exist (publically). That's just an artificial API
> dependency.

I'm worried about adding a wrapper layer on top of an http library
(especially if it's libcurl).  http libraries are pretty complicated,
and we need a lot of functionality.  We need to set headers, control
http version, control content types, send post data, handle redirects,
proxies, https, authentication, etc.  That's a lot of functionality to
wrap, so our wrapper functions would be extensive.  Would they closely
mimic the libcurl API?  If so it might be difficult to swap out
libcurl for something else.  If not then we'd have to spend time
figuring out a good abstraction, which would be difficult and allow
for the possibility of bugs.

I think if we choose the library wisely then we can use the same http
library for a long time and we won't need to swap it out, and so we
don't gain a lot from an abstraction.  Another benefit of using
libcurl (or whatever) directly is that some people will already be
familiar with it, it's well documented, you can search for "how do I
____ with libcurl?" etc.