Curl on Windows

[Brad Anderson]

On Monday, 27 February 2012 at 02:16:01 UTC, Brad Roberts wrote:
> On 2/26/2012 5:15 PM, Brad Anderson wrote:
>> The newly accepted curl library sadly didn't get included in 
>> the 2.058 release as it wasn't added to the Windows makefile.
>> 
>> I created a pull request to resolve this [1] but it had to be 
>> reverted because it broke the auto tester.
>> 
>> The tester broke because of the missing curl.lib library.  
>> I've suggested curl.lib be included with phobos but Brad says
>> it can't due to licensing problems.  I couldn't find a 
>> discussion on the newsgroup about what problems there are.
>
> Careful, that's not quite what I said:

I'm sorry for paraphrasing incorrectly.

>
> ============
> libcurl should not be included *in* phobos as that would have 
> licensing implications. It should probably be included in
> the release tarballs as both source and compiled libraries 
> (also probably only on windows, non-windows can suggest how
> to install via the standard package managers). A reasonable 
> alternative is keeping it completely separate and just
> listing it on the download page on the website.
> ============
>
> The problem is the attribution clause(s) of most licenses, 
> including MIT.  While you might not consider it a problem to
> give attribution, the core libraries of D must not require it.  
> Google for past discussions on the topic, it's well
> trodden territory at this point.

I've done some more searching. It appears Walter contacted 
libcurl's author and asked about it and the author said the 
attribution clause does not apply to binary distributions of 
libcurl.  I think I'll try to make a new pull request using your 
first option (adding the curl source and adding it to the phobos 
build process on Windows in the same manner that zlib already is).

OpenSSL is still an issue, of course.  I could make downloading 
it an optional part of the installer so people have to opt-in to 
the restrictions OpenSSL usage would impose on them.  I'm not 
sure if that would actually help with anything though.

Regards,
Brad Anderson