Regarding question 1, the most widely tested option is probably BinDeps.download_cmd. That is similar to Base.download but with an additional more reliable fallback on Windows to calling PowerShell. You could also look into LibCURL.jl or Requests.jl, which use BinDeps to ensure the binary libraries they depend on will be in place. There's a discussion in an issue, I think in BinDeps, that general file downloading is in need of a refactoring and consolidation between what's in Base, BinDeps, WinRPM, and other implementations floating around. The proposal hasn't been acted on yet though, so it's still a little bit of a mess.
On Wednesday, December 2, 2015 at 3:50:55 AM UTC-8, Tony Kelman wrote: > > No, please don't shell out to curl on windows. That will be going away, > it's only present as a side effect of being bundled with git. We don't use > bundled git any more.
