major: curl_general_init/cleanup

                               History of Changes

Daniel (28 May 2001)

- curl-config now supports '--vernum' that outputs a plain hexadecimal version

  of the libcurl version number (using 8 bits for each 3 numbers). Version

  7.7.4 appears as 070704

- Wrote man pages for curl_global_init and curl_global_cleanup...

- T. Bharath brought news about the usage of the OpenSSL interface that was

  not previously taken into consideration and thus caused libcurl to leak

  memory.  The only somewhat sane approach to fix this dilemma, is adding two

  two new functions curl_global_init() and curl_global_cleanup() that should

  be called *ONCE* by the application using libcurl. The init should be done

  only at startup, no matter how many threads the application is gonna use,

  and the cleanup should be called when the application has finished using

  libcurl completely.

  *** UPGRADE NOTICE ***

  If you write applications using libcurl, you really want to use two

  functions mentioned above !!!

  I can't say I think this is a very beautiful solution, but as OpenSSL

  insists on making lots of stuff on a "global" scope, we're forced to dance

  to their pipe.

- Moving more test cases into the new file format.

Version 7.7.4-pre3

Daniel (23 May 2001)

- Introduced a new file format for storing test cases, and thus I had to

  modify all the perl test scripts and more (I added a new one). I have not

  "ported" all the old test cases to the new format yet, but it'll come.

  The main advantage of this new format is that all test data for each test

  case is stored in a single file. It gives a better overview for each test

  case and a lot less files.

- Andrés García brought a fix for the netscape/mozilla cookie file parsing

  function, as it turns out it doesn't always store the path!

Daniel (22 May 2001)

- As was reported anonymously, when FAILONERROR was used, the httpcode was

  not stored properly and thus wasn't possibly to read after a transfer with

  the curl_easy_getinfo() function. This is now corrected.

- Installed and made use of the following tool versions:

    autoconf 2.50

    libtool 1.4

  As a result of this, the configure script grew to more than double its

  previous size!

  Arkadiusz Miskiewicz helped me by pointing out I had to remove my

  acinclude.m4 file before I could get it working!

Daniel (21 May 2001)

- I made ftps:// work. Added test case 400 to the release archive, as the

  first ftps:// test case. Requires stunnel.