cURL 8.0 has arrived to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the project

As Daniel Stenberg reports, today marks a month since the previous version of this tool was released for use in a shell to transfer files with URL syntax, but it also falls on another date: his birthday. Today they have released curl 8.0.0, and this day marks 25 years since this project began, and the number change seems to have more to do with this event than with a really major release.

Stenberg says it's a major first number change, but no innovative changes no fireworks. They simply decided that it was a matter of time to reset the other figures to zero, and what better time than on a birthday celebrating the quarter century of its existence. There are also no API or ABI breaks, and that's what a jump to a heavily changed version would cause.

cURL 8.0.0 does not include major new features

As for the numbers, and although the conventions are to comply with or pass them, everyone is free to do what they want, in something with XYZ format when Z goes up it is a change to correct errors, Y are medium versions that usually include new features and X are major updates that, in addition to new features, may break backwards compatibility. Hence, they explain that there are no breaks of this type.

It is a major version, but without revolutionary changes or fireworks. We decided it was time to reset the minor number to a more manageable level and doing it exactly on curl's 25th birthday made it extra fun. There is no API or ABI breaking in this version.

Now, they say this is probably the best curl release they've ever done, but I wouldn't take those words too seriously. It is something that is always said, partly because it is logical that a new version of software is released to improve what already exists, not to make it worse. So yes, on the one hand it will be true, but on the other it is something that could be saved.

In terms of changes, there have been several security (CVE) patches added, bug fixes and only one real change, which is the first version of cURL that no longer support building on systems that lack a 64-bit data type.

curl 8.0.0 can now be downloaded from this link, but, if you're not in a hurry, and you don't have to, the best thing for Linux users is to wait for our distribution to update the package in their official repositories.

cURL is important software in the FOSS world that even has won the prize of the month that Microsoft gives to free and open source software.