Install trurl with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, zypper, winget

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository

Commands and aliases

• trurl

Project history

Daniel Stenberg introduced trurl in April 2023 as a small command-line tool in the spirit of Unix 'tr', but for URLs. He wrote that it was created on March 31, 2023 to help shell script authors avoid repeatedly inventing unsafe or inconsistent URL parsing.

The curl project page positions trurl as a companion to curl: it uses libcurl's URL parser, so it understands URLs the same way curl does. That makes it especially useful in scripts that already rely on curl and need to manipulate URLs before passing them to other tools.

The GitHub repository stayed intentionally compact: C source, tests, a man page, release notes, and compatibility notes around libcurl versions. Releases on curl.se and GitHub turned it from a fresh helper into a packaged utility available through Homebrew and multiple Unix distributions.

Adoption history

trurl was adopted in the curl ecosystem because URLs are deceptively hard to parse correctly in shell. Instead of sed, awk, cut, or hand-rolled regular expressions, users can ask trurl for structured URL parts, normalized URLs, redirects, query edits, or JSON output.

Its package-manager spread is unusually broad for a young utility: the input package facts list Homebrew, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Alpine, Arch, Nix, MacPorts, and openSUSE-style packages, matching its role as a small Unix command that distribution maintainers can ship easily.

How it is used

trurl can change hosts, schemes, ports, paths, query strings, and fragments; append path or query components; trim tracking parameters; sort query pairs; handle redirects; read URLs from files or stdin; and emit JSON for scripts.

For package nerds, the appeal is that trurl is a purpose-built URL transformer that composes cleanly with curl, xargs, shell pipelines, package build scripts, and CI jobs without pulling in a heavier language runtime.

Why package nerds care

trurl is significant because it packages a common but error-prone scripting task into a tiny, curl-family binary. It is the sort of tool that shows up in dotfiles, release scripts, URL cleanup jobs, and packaging automation once people stop trusting ad hoc regex parsing.

Its libcurl dependency also matters: package maintainers can reason about its URL behavior in terms of the same parser used by curl, while its compatibility table documents which libcurl versions enable which features.

Timeline

• 2023-03-31: Daniel Stenberg creates trurl.
• 2023-04-03: Stenberg publishes the introductory trurl article.
• 2024-09-12: Stenberg describes trurl as maturing in the 0.15.1 release notes.
• 2025-05-12: curl.se lists trurl 0.16.1 as the current download.

Related projects

• curl is the command-line tool trurl is designed to complement.
• libcurl provides the URL parser used by trurl.
• wcurl is another small curl.se-listed command-line companion tool.

Sources

• https://curl.se/trurl/
• https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2023/04/03/introducing-trurl/
• https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/09/12/trurl-0-15-1/
• https://github.com/curl/trurl