libtorrent

libtorrent (also known as libtorrent-rasterbar) is an open source, efficient, completely free and easy-to-use software implemented in C++ and designed from the offset to act as a very good alternative to all existing BitTorrent implementations.

Not a BitTorrent client per se

Even if it includes a working client, for example purposes only, keep in mind that libtorrent is a library software and not a full featured BitTorrent client. Its main goals are to be CPU efficient, memory efficient, and very easy to use.

In other words, application developers can use libtorrent to add BitTorrent functionality to their projects, no matter if they are dedicated BitTorrent clients or just software that support downloading of torrent files.

Supports the uTorrent transport protocol

libtorrent has been engineered in such a way that it supports a wide range of protocols, including the uTorrent transport protocol, DHT (Distributed Hash Table), UDP (User Datagram Protocol) tracker protocol, Peer extension protocol, as well as the IPv6 tracker protocol.

Among other features, we can mention support for private torrents, superseeding support, HTTP seeding (hoffman-style) support, support for multiple trackers, webseed (GetRight-style) support, tracker returning external IP, and support for magnet links.

Offers a cross-platform BitTorrent implementation

libtorrent is a cross-platform software that has been successfully compiled, installed and tested on numerous operating systems, including GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, SunOS, and Cygwin. It runs on computers supporting either of the 32 or 64-bit CPU architectures.

It can be easily installed on all Linux kernel-based operating system by compiling the source package, which is distributed for free on Softoware or the project’s homepage (see link below). Simply download the source package and save it on your Home directory. Unpack it using an archive manager tool, open a Terminal app and navigate to the location of the extracted archive files (e.g. cd /home/softoware/libtorrent-rasterbar-1.0.3), run the ‘./configure && make’ command to configure and compile the software, followed by the ‘sudo make install’ command to install it.

What is new in this release:

• fixed uTP vulnerability
• make utf8 conversions more lenient
• fix loading of piece priorities from resume data
• improved seed-mode handling (seed-mode will now automatically be left when performing operations implying it's not a seed)
• fixed issue with file priorities and override resume data
• fix request queue size performance issue
• slightly improve UDP tracker performance
• fix http scrapes
• add missing port mapping functions to python binding
• fix bound-checking issue in bdecoder
• expose missing dht_settings fields to python
• add function to query the DHT settings
• fix bug in 'dont_count_slow_torrents' feature, which would start too many torrents

What is new in version 1.0.4:

• python binding build fix for boost-1.57.0
• add --enable-export-all option to configure script, to export all symbols from libtorrent
• fix if_nametoindex build error on windows
• handle overlong utf-8 sequences
• fix link order bug in makefile for python binding
• fix bug in interest calculation, causing premature disconnects
• tweak flag_override_resume_data semantics to make more sense (breaks backwards compatibility of edge-cases)
• improve DHT bootstrapping and periodic refresh
• improve DHT maintanence performance (by pinging instead of full lookups)
• fix bug in DHT routing table node-id prefix optimization
• fix incorrect behavior of flag_use_resume_save_path
• fix protocol race-condition in super seeding mode
• support read-only DHT nodes
• remove unused partial hash DHT lookups
• remove potentially privacy leaking extension (non-anonymous mode)
• peer-id connection ordering fix in anonymous mode
• mingw fixes

What is new in version 1.0.3:

• python binding build fix for boost-1.57.0
• add --enable-export-all option to configure script, to export all symbols from libtorrent
• fix if_nametoindex build error on windows
• handle overlong utf-8 sequences
• fix link order bug in makefile for python binding
• fix bug in interest calculation, causing premature disconnects
• tweak flag_override_resume_data semantics to make more sense (breaks backwards compatibility of edge-cases)
• improve DHT bootstrapping and periodic refresh
• improve DHT maintanence performance (by pinging instead of full lookups)
• fix bug in DHT routing table node-id prefix optimization
• fix incorrect behavior of flag_use_resume_save_path
• fix protocol race-condition in super seeding mode
• support read-only DHT nodes
• remove unused partial hash DHT lookups
• remove potentially privacy leaking extension (non-anonymous mode)
• peer-id connection ordering fix in anonymous mode
• mingw fixes

What is new in version 0.16.13:

• fix auto-manage issue when pausing session
• fix bug in non-sparse mode on windows, causing incorrect file errors to be generated
• fix set_name() on file_storage actually affecting save paths
• fix large file support issue on mingw
• add some error handling to set_piece_hashes()
• fix completed-on timestamp to not be clobbered on each startup
• fix deadlock caused by some UDP tracker failures
• fix potential integer overflow issue in timers on windows
• minor fix to peer_proportional mixed_mode algorithm (TCP limit could go too low)
• graceful pause fix
• i2p fixes
• fix issue when loading certain malformed .torrent files
• pass along host header with http proxy requests and possible http_connection shutdown hang

What is new in version 0.15.9:

• fixed https crash
• added some functions missing from the python binding
• fixed rare piece picker bug
• fixed invalid torrent_status::finished_time
• fixed bugs in dont-have and upload-only extension messages
• don't open files in random-access mode (speeds up hashing)

What is new in version 0.14.2:

• added missing functions to the python bindings torrent_info::map_file, torrent_info::map_block and torrent_info::file_at_offset.
• removed support for boost-1.33 and earlier (probably didn't work)
• fixed potential freezes issues at shutdown
• improved error message for python setup script
• fixed bug when torrent file included announce-list, but no valid tracker urls
• fixed bug where the files requested from web seeds would be the renamed file names instead of the original file names in the torrent.
• documentation fix of queing section
• fixed potential issue in udp_socket (affected udp tracker support)
• made name, comment and created by also be subject to utf-8 error correction (filenames already were)
• fixed dead-lock when settings DHT proxy
• added missing export directives to lazy_entry
• fixed disk cache expiry settings bug (if changed, it would be set to the cache size)
• fixed bug in http_connection when binding to a particular IP
• fixed typo in python binding (torrent_handle::piece_prioritize should be torrent_handle::piece_priorities)
• fixed race condition when saving DHT state
• fixed bugs related to lexical_cast being locale dependent
• added support for SunPro C++ compiler
• fixed bug where messeges sometimes could be encrypted in the wrong order, for encrypted connections.
• fixed race condition where torrents could get stuck waiting to get checked
• fixed mapped files bug where it wouldn't be properly restored from resume data properly
• removed locale dependency in xml parser (caused asserts on windows)
• fixed bug when talking to https 1.0 servers
• fixed UPnP bug that could cause stack overflow

What is new in version 0.14.1:

• added converter for python unicode strings to utf-8 paths
• fixed bug in http downloader where the host field did not include the port number
• fixed headers to not depend on NDEBUG, which would prohibit linking a release build of libtorrent against a debug application
• fixed bug in disk I/O thread that would make the thread sometimes quit when an error occurred
• fixed DHT bug
• fixed potential shutdown crash in disk_io_thread
• fixed usage of deprecated boost.filsystem functions
• fixed http_connection unit test
• fixed bug in DHT when a DHT state was loaded
• made rate limiter change in 0.14 optional (to take estimated TCP/IP overhead into account)
• made the python plugin buildable through the makefile
• fixed UPnP bug when url base ended with a slash and path started with a slash
• fixed various potentially leaking exceptions
• fixed problem with removing torrents that are checking
• fixed documentation bug regarding save_resume_data()
• added missing documentation on torrent creation
• fixed bugs in python client examples
• fixed missing dependency in package-config file
• fixed shared geoip linking in Jamfile
• fixed python bindings build on windows and made it possible to generate a windows installer
• fixed bug in NAT-PMP implementation

What is new in version 0.14:

• There are a few major changes in the API for this version: queuing, extensions, torrent status, and disk cache.

Requirements:

• Boost C++ Libraries