curl(1) unclear regarding minimum TLS version

[andreaso]

The curl(1) man page has the following to say about the --tls-max option.

(SSL) VERSION defines maximum supported TLS version. A minimum is defined by arguments tlsv1.0 or tlsv1.1 or tlsv1.2.

The way I read that section it implies that (for example) the option --tlsv1.1 will try to use TLS version 1.1 or higher.

On the other hand, the curl(1) man page has the following to say about the --tlsv1.1 specifically.

(TLS) Forces curl to use TLS version 1.1 when connecting to a remote TLS server.

The way I read that section the option --tlsv1.1 will try to use TLS version 1.1, only. That is also the behavior I get when trying out the --tlsv1.1.

At least to me the "A minimum is defined by arguments tlsv1.0 or tlsv1.1 or tlsv1.2." phrase is misleading, and should perhaps be removed?

I did this

$ curl -o /dev/null --silent --show-error --tlsv1.1 https://github.com
curl: (35) error:1409442E:SSL routines:ssl3_read_bytes:tlsv1 alert protocol version

...which suggests that --tlsv1.1 only tried to establish a TLS version 1.1 connection.

curl/libcurl version

curl 7.61.0-DEV (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.61.0-DEV OpenSSL/1.1.0g zlib/1.2.11 libidn2/2.0.4 libpsl/0.19.1 (+libidn2/2.0.4) nghttp2/1.30.0 librtmp/2.3
Release-Date: [unreleased]
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps ldap ldaps pop3 pop3s rtmp rtsp smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp 
Features: AsynchDNS IDN IPv6 Largefile NTLM NTLM_WB SSL libz TLS-SRP HTTP2 UnixSockets HTTPS-proxy PSL

operating system

Ubuntu 18.04

[bagder]

It (the OpenSSL backend) is in fact trying only 1.1 when that option is given, and only 1.2 when that option is given... So in that regard the code works like the documentation implies.

The question is then probably if it really should work like that...

[andreaso]

Yeah, but what I (mostly) mean is that the documentation, at least the way I read it, contradicts itself. That is, that the --tls-max text says one thing about minimum, and the --tlsv* another thing.