[cpp-netlib-devel] Urdl

[Matt T. <mat...@gm...>]

Hello folks,

Christopher Kohlhoff, primary author and maintainer of the Boost Asio
library, has recently announced Urdl:

  http://www.nabble.com/-ann--Urdl---a-library-for-downloading-web-content-td24065122.html
  http://www.think-async.com/Urdl

There is a lot of overlap between what Urdl and cpp-netlib provide.
They both parse URL's and can make HTTP calls.

I've been looking at adding timeouts to cpp-netlib and found that this
is a feature that Urdl already has...

There are other pros/cons with the libraries.  Here are some differences:

  o Urdl uses a stream-based approach whereas cpp-netlib uses a
message and message parser abstraction.
  o Cpp-netlib requires Boost 1.35 (I think. I'm using it with 1.37).
Urdl requires 1.38.
  o Urdl offers flexible deployment options (shared, static or
header-only). Cpp-netlib is header-only.
  o Urdl offers HTTPS (which requires OpenSSL)
  o Urdl provides timeouts
  o Cpp-netlib appears to be more stable.  Urdl is still very much
under active development
  o Urdl's documentation is more complete

Was there any other points that are worth noting?  What else does
cpp-netlib (or Urdl) do?

I guess what I'm raising is where should we focus our efforts?  Should
we combine the projects, discard one, or continue as-is?  Personally I
think a bad result would be to have two very similar decent C++
libraries that have a huge overlap in features...  (An opinion which
seems to be shared with others on this project given the efforts to
integrate Pion.)

I intend to contact Chris about what his intentions are with Urdl
(intending on submitting it to Boost?  Leaving it as an Asio example?)
but I thought I'd just see what you folks think first...

Cheers,
Matt