Rtorrent: [Feature request] Webseed support

[EtiennePerot]

Opened 6 years ago is http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/ticket/245 - to implement web seeding in rtorrent.
Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_%28protocol%29#Web_seeding

Two conflicting specifications exist, so yes this is ambiguous. The more straightforward of the two specs is the GetRight one.

This is an important part of BitTorrent's original purpose: to serve as a cheap, crowd-powered way to alleviate the load on central web servers on to everyone else in the swarm. But of course the file is initially only on a web server; the first seed has to get the file somehow. Web seeding is a proper solution to this problem, which is why I think rtorrent should support it.

[f100024]

Yes this feature will be very appreciated. Because it absence is blocking to use rtorrent everywhere.

[nomandera]

Is this planned?

As far as I can ascertain rtorrent is the only remaining serious client without webseed support although to be fair some other clients have partial implementations e.g. no SSL capability

[M0ns1gn0r]

Please implement, I can't download from Internet Archive due to lack of this feature.

[Dmole]

+1

[rtasson]

+1

[ghost]

I just ran into a situation where a torrent only has web seeds and rtorrent is incapable of handling that.

[nomandera]

1 year anniversary of my original request.

The world moves on and not always for the better. In an age of ever growing surveillance, webseed TLS support helps protect users.

[naf419]

I gave it a shot:
https://github.com/rakshasa/libtorrent/pull/164

ETA: needs testers

[chros73]

I've also added this patch into rtorrent-ps-ch on the feature/webseed branch, you can try to compile it (don't forget to checkout that branch after cloning).