LibURL vs. cURL

[Richard Gaskin]

Ken Corey wrote:
> Just to be pedantic you can have libURL on /desktop/ OSes.  A
> significant restriction, for some of us.

Not pedantic at all, IMO, but an important point worth mentioning.

Given the critical role Internet connectivity plays in mobile apps, 
arguably even more important than on the desktop, I trust that the 
LiveCode engines for Android and iOS will support sockets very soon, 
with libURL coming along for the ride.

> liburl is not open source, so we cannot do any of the porting...

It's not GPL'd per se, but the source is available to us and RunRev 
apparently has no problem with anyone modifying libURL for their own 
needs, as Trevor and others have done.

Porting to iOS and Android, however, is dependent on socket support for 
those engines, an important piece that I trust won't be missing for long.

> It's possible to port libcurl to android:
> http://thesoftwarerogue.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/porting-of-libcurl-to-android-os-using.html
>
> And apparently it's possible on iOS as well:
> http://creativealgorithms.com/blog/content/building-libcurl-ios-42

Licensed under the generous terms of the MIT/X license, it's indeed 
unencumbered by the sorts of restrictions which sometimes make using 
GPL'd software difficult for proprietary projects.

But even with that, it's more work to set up your app to use it than to 
use libURL.

Of course those with the time and interest should pursue whatever 
solutions work for them, and cURL has a lot going for it.

But it seems a reasonable expectation that libURL would be available for 
mobile platforms very soon, and given that most Web APIs use HTTP it's 
rather hard to beat for ROI when developing in LiveCode.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
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