Re: Emacs HTTP libraries [was: Re: How to contribute new package to GNU ELPA?]

[Stefan Monnier]

> Emacs definitely needs an alternative to url.el.  It has some issues
> that are not easily solved nor worked around, such as potentially
> calling callbacks multiple times[0], requests not timing out, and some
> of its API being in the form of undocumented variables that must be
> let-bound around calls to its functions.

We should improve the API, indeed.  Would you be interested in working
on that?

Extra bonus points if we can write a simple "`request` emulation layer"
on top of it ;-)

We should also fix the bugs: the multiple callbacks issue shouldn't be
hard to trackdown and fix.

> So in Ement.el[5], I've been using a simple Curl wrapper library that
> I've started.[6]  It's rather primitive, but it seems to work well.

I think it's important for Emacs to have a good HTTP API that works
without any external dependency.  It (technically) could be in any of
the forms:
- Including `curl` in Emacs' tarball.
- Linking to some more-or-less standard HTTP library and exposing some
  API to ELisp.
- Write it all in ELisp (like url.el does).

If it can be done by improving url.el and growing a new API on top of
it, that will be less painful.


        Stefan