[web-devel] http-client library

[Simon Hengel]

On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 04:48:04AM +0200, Michael Snoyman wrote:
> After some discussion with Kazu, I'm planning on starting work on a new
> package called http-client. The goal will be to separate out the core
> functionality from http-conduit into a lower-dependency package. In
> particular, I'm hoping to get a package without dependencies on tls,
> conduit, or resourcet. The motivations for this are:
> 
> * Kazu and I need a lighter-weight library for testing out Warp.
> * With WAI 2.0 coming out, the resourcet-dependent interface of
> http-conduit currently doesn't make as much sense.
> * By separating things out like this, I believe we can get clean things up.
> * The vast majority of the http-conduit codebase has nothing at all to do
> with TLS or conduit support. Persistent connections, cookie handling,
> multipart forms, chunking, etc, all fall purely into the realm of raw HTTP
> support. By getting these core features out there separately, people will
> be able to take advantage of them without reinventing the wheel.
> 
> Is there any interest from others in this project? If so, please let me
> know, as specific requests can help guide the API decisions I make.

I'd love to have an alternative to http-conduit with fewer dependencies.
However, for me the main reason to go with http-conduit instead of HTTP
is support for TLS.  Not sure what the solution here is.  I guess
ideally GHC or network would provide SSL/TLS support by relying on OS
libraries.

Cheers,
Simon