Today is performed 27 years from the moment of creation cURL – This is a command line based on the Libcurl library for transmitting data from the server and to the server using various protocols, Including http, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, Pop3, POP3S, SMTP и SMTPS. It is very popular in the field of automation and scripts thanks to a wide range of functions and supported protocols.
A little story
- The creator of Curl is Daniel Stanberg, who created this tool in 1998 year and still supports it. In fact, Stanberg is a person of one program. Very little is known about its other projects or youthful developments.
- Like many peers, Daniel met computers in high school, when in the mid-80s they bought a friend Commodore 64. The guys bought a lot of computer magazines, by which they learned to program. In those days, program code (For example, games) printed right in the magazine. Several pages of code, which was necessary to manually and without errors introduce into the computer, And then start.
- IN 1985 year the guy got hold of his own computer and began to program like a maniac, studied Assembler and joined the demograph. All in all, This is an example of another talented programmer-school, who completely plunged into his passion, without formal education. After service in the Swedish army in 1991 year, the young man decided not to go to college, and found the first work, related to servicing computer equipment in IBM (Mainframm configuration before sending to customers). There he met and studied the Unix and the ecosystem of OPENSORS tools well. And in his free time he began to program ... What is still doing.
- Daniel prepared for the supply of mainframes and magnetic tapes for customers. But it became clear, that all software with magnetic tapes can be copy, compile, look, How it works, and change at your discretion. It was the concept of "free code" (The term "OPENSORS" appeared later).
- After 1993 all official works of Daniel were directly related to programming, And the knowledge of console utilities came in handy in the future. These were just years of the violent spread of the Internet among enthusiasts, The years of the first BBS and t. e. Then the community of Openesor enthusiasts was formed.
- IN 1996 year Daniel Stenberg found a Brazilian colleague Raphael Sagula, who wrote the httpget console utility (A simple program in 100 lines of code). Daniel took it as an auxiliary tool to IRC-boru For automatic calculation of currency conversion courses (Swedish crowns in dollars). Courses had to be downloaded from the Internet. He was already engaged in his own further development of the program. With each version, the utility expanded the functionality: At first, support for HTTP Proxes appeared, Then the protocol Gopher and FTP and so on. IN 1997 year she was renamed Urlget, A 20 Marta 1998 for the first time, a version called curl, Reduced from "Client url". The size of the program by that time had grown up to 2200 lines of code. As a result, Curl turned into a powerful universal tool, allowing us to interact by many different protocols with URL syntax.
- Stenberg himself considers this not his special merit, but rather win the lottery. But his further quarter-century commitment to the project and the general case of Opensors still deserves respect. If you look at the statistics, In the entire history of Daniel belongs to approximately 56% From the total number of commits, So his role is still important, Moreover, in the past few years, this role has become its main paid work. There are several more official sponsors.
- Certainly, All this is done in the framework of standard opensor development, But if the company wants to pay money to the Meinters, then this is only welcome. Now the site is Curl.se serves 17 TB traffic per month, Performing more 470 Mill of requests, And the official image for Docker was requested more than four billion times.