Mention Downloads.jl as alternative?

[matthijscox-asml]

Hi there, I was looking for a curl wrapper and found your package. Thanks for the simple interface!

However, I'd like to mention that Downloads.jl is actually also a wrapper LibCurl.jl and can also do HTTP GET and PUT commands (so it can ironically also upload). It seems Downloads.jl is used by Pkg.jl, so seems well maintained.

Maybe it's good to mention Downloads.jl as alternative in your documentation? I noticed I was running into SSL certificate issues (with custom CA Certificates) when using CurlHTTP.jl, while Downloads.jl works out of the box.

[bluesmoon]

What are the cert issues you ran into with CurlHTTP? I mainly made CurlHTTP because the other options didn't have an easy way to use mutual TLS.

Our use case also uses custom CA certificates as well as a client certificate.

The Slides from my JuliaCon talk (linked from the README) mention Downloads.jl: https://speakerdeck.com/bluesmoon/curling-with-julia?slide=4

[matthijscox-asml]

using verbose=true I get: "schannel: TLS 1.3 not supported on Windows prior to 11"
my coworker though gets Cert verify failed: BADCERT_NOT_TRUSTED

[matthijscox-asml]

Note that with HTTP.jl I get another SSL error: JuliaWeb/HTTP.jl#1226.
But somehow Downloads.jl gets it right. I haven't been able to figure out why that is the case.

Edit: watching your talk right now (nice talk so far!) and you mention HTTP.jl cannot do easily do "Mutual TLS (client certificates)", so maybe you already know HTTP.jl isn't very good at this?

[matthijscox-asml]

Guess I have to provide the certification paths myself via CurlHTTP.CurlEasy ?

I guess Downloads.jl finds these by default on my system somehow? But I think it just uses NetworkOptions.ca_roots_path(), which uses some environment variables?

[matthijscox-asml]

Sorry for spamming you with messages, but I think this slide would be great to add to the readme.md / docs:

And then we could add some bullets under Downloads.jl and CurlHTTP.jl to compare the two?

Both actually wrap LibCurl.jl, but Download.jl has limited functionality. What's the extra functionality of CurlHTTP? The streaming parallel responses you mention in the talk? And easier use of mutual TLS.
The benefit of Downloads.jl might be better default behavior for that limited functionality, due to stress-testing in Pkg.jl?

So I guess it could be something like:

• HTTP.jl - pure Julia
  • Supports client and server mode as well as websockets
  • Complicated to do mutual TLS certificates
  • No single-threaded parallel requests
• Downloads.jl - wraps LibCurl.jl
  • Limited HTTP functionality (only GET and PUT) ?
  • No single-threaded parallel requests ?
  • But heavily maintained and used by Pkg.jl
• CurlHTTP.jl (this package) - wraps LibCurl.jl
  • Easy mutual TLS (easier than Downloads.jl or not fully possible in Downloads.jl?)
  • Single-threaded parallel requests

[bluesmoon]

CurlHTTP will use LibCURL.cacert by default as the CA Cert. You pass it in only if that is not what you want. I can look into the environment variables used by Downloads.jl.

[bluesmoon]

Ok, 0.1.4 will use NetworkOptions.ca_roots() instead of LibCURL.cacert.