Tooling

The scripts and tools that come with the source.

Style and lint

Tool	Purpose
scripts/checksrc.pl	C-style enforcement (column width, brace placement, banned APIs). Run via make checksrc.
scripts/checksrc-all.pl	Recursive checksrc over the whole tree
scripts/spacecheck.pl	Tabs and trailing whitespace detection
scripts/badwords + scripts/badwords.txt	Catches words/phrases that should not appear in docs (e.g. AI clichés, deprecated terms)
.clang-tidy.yml	Configuration for clang-tidy used by .github/workflows/codeql.yml-adjacent jobs
scripts/cmakelint.sh	Lints CMakeLists.txt files
scripts/perlcheck.sh	Runs perlcritic against the harness Perl scripts
scripts/pythonlint.sh	Runs flake8 against test scripts

CI runs all of these in .github/workflows/checksrc.yml and .github/workflows/checkdocs.yml.

Documentation toolchain

Man pages and the curl website are generated from markdown sources under docs/cmdline-opts/ and docs/libcurl/opts/. The format is "curldown" — restricted Markdown described in docs/CURLDOWN.md.

Tool	Purpose
scripts/managen	Generates the curl.1 and libcurl-*.3 nroff sources
scripts/cd2nroff	Converts a single curldown file to nroff
scripts/nroff2cd	Reverse of cd2nroff (used to migrate old man pages, kept for testing)
scripts/cd2cd	Round-trip canonicaliser
scripts/cdall	Render every .md under docs/
scripts/mdlinkcheck	Validates links in markdown docs

make invokes the relevant scripts as part of building docs/.

Release tooling

Tool	Purpose
scripts/maketgz	Builds the release tarball
scripts/dmaketgz	Docker-wrapped tarball build
scripts/release-notes.pl	Auto-generates the running RELEASE-NOTES from git log
scripts/contrithanks.sh	Updates docs/THANKS from git history
scripts/contributors.sh	Lists contributors in human-readable form
scripts/verify-release	Re-runs distcheck style validation on a built tarball
scripts/release-tools.sh	Cron entry-point for the release workflow
docs/RELEASE-PROCEDURE.md	The maintainer's runbook

Build helpers

Tool	Purpose
scripts/mk-ca-bundle.pl	Generate a curl-friendly CA bundle from Mozilla's NSS source
scripts/mk-unity.pl	Build "unity" amalgamation files (used by some CI variants)
lib/optiontable.pl	Generates lib/easyoptions.c from the option list
src/mkhelp.pl	Generates src/tool_hugehelp.c (built-in --manual text)
src/mk-file-embed.pl	Embeds files into the curl tool binary

Test helpers

Tool	Purpose
tests/runtests.pl	The main test driver
tests/testcurl.pl	The classic autobuild harness
tests/memanalyze.pl	Parses CURL_MEMDEBUG= logs
tests/runner.pm	Test runner state machine
tests/server/	A dozen small protocol servers (sws.c, ftpd.c, ...) used as test fixtures
tests/secureserver.pl	TLS wrapper for the in-tree HTTP/FTP servers
tests/sshserver.pl	Sets up an OpenSSH instance with an isolated configuration
tests/devtest.pl	Quick "is the harness alive?" check
tests/valgrind.pm + valgrind.supp	Valgrind hooks

CI configuration

All CI files live under .github/workflows/. The most important:

• linux.yml, macos.yml, windows.yml — the platform matrix
• non-native.yml — cross-compiled targets
• http3-linux.yml — HTTP/3 variants
• configure-vs-cmake.yml — drift detection
• distcheck.yml — release tarball validation
• codeql.yml — GitHub static analysis
• fuzz.yml — short fuzz on each PR
• appveyor.yml and appveyor.sh — Windows-specific complementary CI
• .circleci/ — additional CI provider

See docs/tests/CI.md for the project's own description of what runs where.

Editor settings

The repo ships .editorconfig, .clang-tidy.yml, and .dir-locals.el for Emacs. Most editors auto-pick the right indentation if you respect .editorconfig (2-space indent, no tabs, 79-column ruler).