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A general description is here.
Work in progress on optional use of ‘libcurl’ (version 7.28.0 or later) for Internet access (including on Windows):
• ‘capabilities("libcurl")’ reports if this is available.
• ‘libcurlVersion()’ reports the version in use, and other details.
• ‘curlGetHeaders()’ retrieves the headers for ‘http://’, ‘https://’, ‘ftp://’ and ‘ftps://’ URLs: analysis of these headers can provide insights into the `existence' of a URL (it might for example be permanently redirected) and will be so used in ‘R CMD check’.
• ‘download.file()’ has a new built-in method ‘"libcurl"’ which will handle ‘https://’ and ‘ftps://’ URLs, follow redirections, and allows simultaneous downloads of multiple URLs.