curl isn't always available - in fact the bootstrap script installs it if it isn't there - so I don't think this change will work.

That is also true for wget, so why require two different tools for the same task?

There are quite a few other places where we use wget - same for curl.

If you want to switch all invocations to one or the other, I don't mind. wget appears to be installed with ubuntu by default - at least on my test machines - so that's probably the safer bet.

I suggest closing as wontfix. Curl is very nice, but wget is much more commonly available.

In both Ubuntu and Debian, wget packages are set as Priority: Important, while curl is Priority: Optional. Important packages are those which "should be found on any Unix-like system" and are thus much more likely to be present in default installations of the operating system. For instance, Digital Ocean's images have wget but not curl by default.

More info at https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/ch-pkg_basics.en.html#s-priority

If you do a default Debian installation all the packages of priority Standard or higher will be installed in your system. If you select pre-defined tasks you will get lower priority packages too.

So all default installations of Debian will have wget but not curl. Ubuntu inherits this policy from Debian.

@callahad mind making a pr to switch us away from curl to wget then? That would be nice, since then we don't need to install curl...