NAME

       libcurl-thread - libcurl thread safety

Multi-threading with libcurl

       libcurl is thread safe but has no internal thread synchronization. You may have to provide
       your own locking should you meet any of the thread safety exceptions below.

       Handles. You must never share the same handle in  multiple  threads.   You  can  pass  the
       handles  around  among  threads, but you must never use a single handle from more than one
       thread at any given time.

       Shared objects. You can share certain data between multiple handles  by  using  the  share
       interface   but   you   must   provide  your  own  locking  and  set  curl_share_setopt(3)
       CURLSHOPT_LOCKFUNC and CURLSHOPT_UNLOCKFUNC.

TLS

       If you are accessing HTTPS or FTPS URLs in a multi-threaded manner, you are then of course
       using  the  underlying  SSL  library  multi-threaded  and  those libs might have their own
       requirements on this issue.  You may need to provide one or two functions to allow  it  to
       function properly:

       OpenSSL
              http://www.openssl.org/docs/crypto/threads.html#DESCRIPTION

              http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/opensslthreadlock.html

       GnuTLS http://gnutls.org/manual/html_node/Thread-safety.html

       NSS    thread-safe already without anything required.

       PolarSSL
              Required actions unknown.

       yassl  Required actions unknown.

       axTLS  Required actions unknown.

       Secure-Transport
              The engine is used by libcurl in a way that is fully thread-safe.

       WinSSL The engine is used by libcurl in a way that is fully thread-safe.

       wolfSSL
              The engine is used by libcurl in a way that is fully thread-safe.

Other areas of caution

       Signals
              Signals  are  used  for  timing  out name resolves (during DNS lookup) - when built
              without using either the c-ares or threaded resolver backends. When using  multiple
              threads  you  should  set  the  CURLOPT_NOSIGNAL(3)  option  to 1L for all handles.
              Everything will or might work fine except that timeouts are not honored during  the
              DNS  lookup - which you can work around by building libcurl with c-ares support. c-
              ares is a library that provides asynchronous  name  resolves.  On  some  platforms,
              libcurl simply will not function properly multi-threaded unless this option is set.

       Name resolving
              gethostby*  functions  and  other  system  calls. These functions, provided by your
              operating system, must be thread safe. It is very important that libcurl  can  find
              and use thread safe versions of these and other system calls, as otherwise it can't
              function fully thread safe. Some operating systems are known to have faulty  thread
              implementations.  We  have previously received problem reports on *BSD (at least in
              the past, they may be working fine these days).  Some operating  systems  that  are
              known to have solid and working thread support are Linux, Solaris and Windows.

       curl_global_* functions
              These functions are not thread safe. If you are using libcurl with multiple threads
              it is  especially  important  that  before  use  you  call  curl_global_init(3)  or
              curl_global_init_mem(3)  to  explicitly  initialize the library and its dependents,
              rather than rely on the "lazy" fail-safe initialization that takes place the  first
              time  curl_easy_init(3)  is called. For an in-depth explanation refer to libcurl(3)
              section GLOBAL CONSTANTS.

       Memory functions
              These functions, provided either by your operating system or your own replacements,
              must  be  thread  safe.  You  can  use  curl_global_init_mem(3)  to  set  your  own
              replacement memory functions.

       Non-safe
              CURLOPT_DNS_USE_GLOBAL_CACHE(3) is not thread-safe.