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21 KiB
how to install curl and libcurl
Installing Binary Packages
Lots of people download binary distributions of curl and libcurl. This document does not describe how to install curl or libcurl using such a binary package. This document describes how to compile, build and install curl and libcurl from source code.
Building using vcpkg
You can download and install curl and libcurl using the vcpkg dependency manager:
git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git
cd vcpkg
./bootstrap-vcpkg.sh
./vcpkg integrate install
vcpkg install curl[tool]
The curl port in vcpkg is kept up to date by Microsoft team members and community contributors. If the version is out of date, please create an issue or pull request on the vcpkg repository.
Building from git
If you get your code off a git repository instead of a release tarball, see
the GIT-INFO
file in the root directory for specific instructions on how to
proceed.
Unix
A normal Unix installation is made in three or four steps (after you have unpacked the source archive):
./configure --with-openssl [--with-gnutls --with-wolfssl]
make
make test (optional)
make install
(Adjust the configure line accordingly to use the TLS library you want.)
You probably need to be root when doing the last command.
Get a full listing of all available configure options by invoking it like:
./configure --help
If you want to install curl in a different file hierarchy than /usr/local
,
specify that when running configure:
./configure --prefix=/path/to/curl/tree
If you have write permission in that directory, you can do 'make install' without being root. An example of this would be to make a local install in your own home directory:
./configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make install
The configure script always tries to find a working SSL library unless
explicitly told not to. If you have OpenSSL installed in the default search
path for your compiler/linker, you do not need to do anything special. If you
have OpenSSL installed in /usr/local/ssl
, you can run configure like:
./configure --with-openssl
If you have OpenSSL installed somewhere else (for example, /opt/OpenSSL
) and
you have pkg-config installed, set the pkg-config path first, like this:
env PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/OpenSSL/lib/pkgconfig ./configure --with-openssl
Without pkg-config installed, use this:
./configure --with-openssl=/opt/OpenSSL
If you insist on forcing a build without SSL support, even though you may have OpenSSL installed in your system, you can run configure like this:
./configure --without-ssl
If you have OpenSSL installed, but with the libraries in one place and the
header files somewhere else, you have to set the LDFLAGS
and CPPFLAGS
environment variables prior to running configure. Something like this should
work:
CPPFLAGS="-I/path/to/ssl/include" LDFLAGS="-L/path/to/ssl/lib" ./configure
If you have shared SSL libs installed in a directory where your run-time linker does not find them (which usually causes configure failures), you can provide this option to gcc to set a hard-coded path to the run-time linker:
LDFLAGS=-Wl,-R/usr/local/ssl/lib ./configure --with-openssl
More Options
To force a static library compile, disable the shared library creation by running configure like:
./configure --disable-shared
To tell the configure script to skip searching for thread-safe functions, add an option like:
./configure --disable-thread
If you are a curl developer and use gcc, you might want to enable more debug
options with the --enable-debug
option.
curl can be built to use a whole range of libraries to provide various useful services, and configure will try to auto-detect a decent default. But if you want to alter it, you can select how to deal with each individual library.
Select TLS backend
These options are provided to select TLS backend to use.
- AmiSSL:
--with-amissl
- BearSSL:
--with-bearssl
- GnuTLS:
--with-gnutls
. - mbedTLS:
--with-mbedtls
- MesaLink:
--with-mesalink
- NSS:
--with-nss
- OpenSSL:
--with-openssl
(also for BoringSSL and libressl) - rustls:
--with-rustls
- schannel:
--with-schannel
- secure transport:
--with-secure-transport
- wolfSSL:
--with-wolfssl
Windows
Building Windows DLLs and C run-time (CRT) linkage issues
As a general rule, building a DLL with static CRT linkage is highly discouraged, and intermixing CRTs in the same app is something to avoid at any cost.
Reading and comprehending Microsoft Knowledge Base articles KB94248 and KB140584 is a must for any Windows developer. Especially important is full understanding if you are not going to follow the advice given above.
- How To Use the C Run-Time
- Run-Time Library Compiler Options
- Potential Errors Passing CRT Objects Across DLL Boundaries
If your app is misbehaving in some strange way, or it is suffering from memory corruption, before asking for further help, please try first to rebuild every single library your app uses as well as your app using the debug multithreaded dynamic C runtime.
If you get linkage errors read section 5.7 of the FAQ document.
MingW32
Make sure that MinGW32's bin dir is in the search path, for example:
set PATH=c:\mingw32\bin;%PATH%
then run mingw32-make mingw32
in the root dir. There are other
make targets available to build libcurl with more features, use:
mingw32-make mingw32-zlib
to build with Zlib support;mingw32-make mingw32-ssl-zlib
to build with SSL and Zlib enabled;mingw32-make mingw32-ssh2-ssl-zlib
to build with SSH2, SSL, Zlib;mingw32-make mingw32-ssh2-ssl-sspi-zlib
to build with SSH2, SSL, Zlib and SSPI support.
If you have any problems linking libraries or finding header files, be sure
to verify that the provided Makefile.m32
files use the proper paths, and
adjust as necessary. It is also possible to override these paths with
environment variables, for example:
set ZLIB_PATH=c:\zlib-1.2.8
set OPENSSL_PATH=c:\openssl-1.0.2c
set LIBSSH2_PATH=c:\libssh2-1.6.0
It is also possible to build with other LDAP SDKs than MS LDAP; currently it is possible to build with native Win32 OpenLDAP, or with the Novell CLDAP SDK. If you want to use these you need to set these vars:
set LDAP_SDK=c:\openldap
set USE_LDAP_OPENLDAP=1
or for using the Novell SDK:
set USE_LDAP_NOVELL=1
If you want to enable LDAPS support then set LDAPS=1.
Cygwin
Almost identical to the unix installation. Run the configure script in the
curl source tree root with sh configure
. Make sure you have the sh
executable in /bin/
or you will see the configure fail toward the end.
Run make
Disabling Specific Protocols in Windows builds
The configure utility, unfortunately, is not available for the Windows environment, therefore, you cannot use the various disable-protocol options of the configure utility on this platform.
You can use specific defines to disable specific protocols and features. See CURL-DISABLE.md for the full list.
If you want to set any of these defines you have the following options:
- Modify
lib/config-win32.h
- Modify
lib/curl_setup.h
- Modify
winbuild/Makefile.vc
- Modify the "Preprocessor Definitions" in the libcurl project
Note: The pre-processor settings can be found using the Visual Studio IDE under "Project -> Settings -> C/C++ -> General" in VC6 and "Project -> Properties -> Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> Preprocessor" in later versions.
Using BSD-style lwIP instead of Winsock TCP/IP stack in Win32 builds
In order to compile libcurl and curl using BSD-style lwIP TCP/IP stack it is
necessary to make definition of preprocessor symbol USE_LWIPSOCK
visible to
libcurl and curl compilation processes. To set this definition you have the
following alternatives:
- Modify
lib/config-win32.h
andsrc/config-win32.h
- Modify
winbuild/Makefile.vc
- Modify the "Preprocessor Definitions" in the libcurl project
Note: The pre-processor settings can be found using the Visual Studio IDE under "Project -> Settings -> C/C++ -> General" in VC6 and "Project -> Properties -> Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> Preprocessor" in later versions.
Once that libcurl has been built with BSD-style lwIP TCP/IP stack support, in
order to use it with your program it is mandatory that your program includes
lwIP header file <lwip/opt.h>
(or another lwIP header that includes this)
before including any libcurl header. Your program does not need the
USE_LWIPSOCK
preprocessor definition which is for libcurl internals only.
Compilation has been verified with lwIP 1.4.0 and contrib-1.4.0.
This BSD-style lwIP TCP/IP stack support must be considered experimental given that it has been verified that lwIP 1.4.0 still needs some polish, and libcurl might yet need some additional adjustment, caveat emptor.
Important static libcurl usage note
When building an application that uses the static libcurl library on Windows,
you must add -DCURL_STATICLIB
to your CFLAGS
. Otherwise the linker will
look for dynamic import symbols.
Legacy Windows and SSL
Schannel (from Windows SSPI), is the native SSL library in Windows. However, Schannel in Windows <= XP is unable to connect to servers that no longer support the legacy handshakes and algorithms used by those versions. If you will be using curl in one of those earlier versions of Windows you should choose another SSL backend such as OpenSSL.
Apple Platforms (macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS, and their simulator counterparts)
On modern Apple operating systems, curl can be built to use Apple's SSL/TLS
implementation, Secure Transport, instead of OpenSSL. To build with Secure
Transport for SSL/TLS, use the configure option --with-secure-transport
. (It
is not necessary to use the option --without-openssl
.)
When Secure Transport is in use, the curl options --cacert
and --capath
and their libcurl equivalents, will be ignored, because Secure Transport uses
the certificates stored in the Keychain to evaluate whether or not to trust
the server. This, of course, includes the root certificates that ship with the
OS. The --cert
and --engine
options, and their libcurl equivalents, are
currently unimplemented in curl with Secure Transport.
In general, a curl build for an Apple ARCH/SDK/DEPLOYMENT_TARGET
combination
can be taken by providing appropriate values for ARCH
, SDK
, DEPLOYMENT_TARGET
below and running the commands:
# Set these three according to your needs
export ARCH=x86_64
export SDK=macosx
export DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.8
export CFLAGS="-arch $ARCH -isysroot $(xcrun -sdk $SDK --show-sdk-path) -m$SDK-version-min=$DEPLOYMENT_TARGET"
./configure --host=$ARCH-apple-darwin --prefix $(pwd)/artifacts --with-secure-transport
make -j8
make install
Above will build curl for macOS platform with x86_64
architecture and 10.8
as deployment target.
Here is an example for iOS device:
export ARCH=arm64
export SDK=iphoneos
export DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=11.0
export CFLAGS="-arch $ARCH -isysroot $(xcrun -sdk $SDK --show-sdk-path) -m$SDK-version-min=$DEPLOYMENT_TARGET"
./configure --host=$ARCH-apple-darwin --prefix $(pwd)/artifacts --with-secure-transport
make -j8
make install
Another example for watchOS simulator for macs with Apple Silicon:
export ARCH=arm64
export SDK=watchsimulator
export DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=5.0
export CFLAGS="-arch $ARCH -isysroot $(xcrun -sdk $SDK --show-sdk-path) -m$SDK-version-min=$DEPLOYMENT_TARGET"
./configure --host=$ARCH-apple-darwin --prefix $(pwd)/artifacts --with-secure-transport
make -j8
make install
In all above, the built libraries and executables can be found in artifacts
folder.
Android
When building curl for Android it's recommended to use a Linux environment
since using curl's configure
script is the easiest way to build curl
for Android. Before you can build curl for Android, you need to install the
Android NDK first. This can be done using the SDK Manager that is part of
Android Studio. Once you have installed the Android NDK, you need to figure out
where it has been installed and then set up some environment variables before
launching configure
. On macOS, those variables could look like this to compile
for aarch64
and API level 29:
export NDK=~/Library/Android/sdk/ndk/20.1.5948944
export HOST_TAG=darwin-x86_64
export TOOLCHAIN=$NDK/toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/$HOST_TAG
export AR=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/aarch64-linux-android-ar
export AS=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/aarch64-linux-android-as
export CC=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/aarch64-linux-android29-clang
export CXX=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/aarch64-linux-android29-clang++
export LD=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/aarch64-linux-android-ld
export RANLIB=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/aarch64-linux-android-ranlib
export STRIP=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/aarch64-linux-android-strip
When building on Linux or targeting other API levels or architectures, you need to adjust those variables accordingly. After that you can build curl like this:
./configure --host aarch64-linux-android --with-pic --disable-shared
Note that this will not give you SSL/TLS support. If you need SSL/TLS, you have
to build curl against a SSL/TLS layer, e.g. OpenSSL, because it's impossible for
curl to access Android's native SSL/TLS layer. To build curl for Android using
OpenSSL, follow the OpenSSL build instructions and then install libssl.a
and
libcrypto.a
to $TOOLCHAIN/sysroot/usr/lib
and copy include/openssl
to
$TOOLCHAIN/sysroot/usr/include
. Now you can build curl for Android using
OpenSSL like this:
./configure --host aarch64-linux-android --with-pic --disable-shared --with-openssl="$TOOLCHAIN/sysroot/usr"
Note, however, that you must target at least Android M (API level 23) or configure
will not be able to detect OpenSSL since stderr
(and the like) were not defined
before Android M.
IBM i
For IBM i (formerly OS/400), you can use curl in two different ways:
- Natively, running in the ILE. The obvious use is being able to call curl
from ILE C or RPG applications.
- You will need to build this from source. See
packages/OS400/README
for the ILE specific build instructions.
- You will need to build this from source. See
- In the PASE environment, which runs AIX programs. curl will be built as
it would be on AIX.
- IBM provides builds of curl in their Yum repository for PASE software.
- To build from source, follow the Unix instructions.
There are some additional limitations and quirks with curl on this platform; they affect both environments.
Multithreading notes
By default, jobs in IBM i will not start with threading enabled. (Exceptions
include interactive PASE sessions started by QP2TERM
or SSH.) If you use
curl in an environment without threading when options like async DNS were
enabled, you will messages like:
getaddrinfo() thread failed to start
Do not panic! curl and your program are not broken. You can fix this by:
- Set the environment variable
QIBM_MULTI_THREADED
toY
before starting your program. This can be done at whatever scope you feel is appropriate. - Alternatively, start the job with the
ALWMLTTHD
parameter set to*YES
.
Cross compile
Download and unpack the curl package.
cd
to the new directory. (e.g. cd curl-7.12.3
)
Set environment variables to point to the cross-compile toolchain and call
configure with any options you need. Be sure and specify the --host
and
--build
parameters at configuration time. The following script is an
example of cross-compiling for the IBM 405GP PowerPC processor using the
toolchain from MonteVista for Hardhat Linux.
#! /bin/sh
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/hardhat/devkit/ppc/405/bin
export CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/hardhat/devkit/ppc/405/target/usr/include"
export AR=ppc_405-ar
export AS=ppc_405-as
export LD=ppc_405-ld
export RANLIB=ppc_405-ranlib
export CC=ppc_405-gcc
export NM=ppc_405-nm
./configure --target=powerpc-hardhat-linux
--host=powerpc-hardhat-linux
--build=i586-pc-linux-gnu
--prefix=/opt/hardhat/devkit/ppc/405/target/usr/local
--exec-prefix=/usr/local
You may also need to provide a parameter like --with-random=/dev/urandom
to
configure as it cannot detect the presence of a random number generating
device for a target system. The --prefix
parameter specifies where curl
will be installed. If configure
completes successfully, do make
and make install
as usual.
In some cases, you may be able to simplify the above commands to as little as:
./configure --host=ARCH-OS
REDUCING SIZE
There are a number of configure options that can be used to reduce the size of
libcurl for embedded applications where binary size is an important factor.
First, be sure to set the CFLAGS
variable when configuring with any relevant
compiler optimization flags to reduce the size of the binary. For gcc, this
would mean at minimum the -Os option, and potentially the -march=X
,
-mdynamic-no-pic
and -flto
options as well, e.g.
./configure CFLAGS='-Os' LDFLAGS='-Wl,-Bsymbolic'...
Note that newer compilers often produce smaller code than older versions due to improved optimization.
Be sure to specify as many --disable-
and --without-
flags on the
configure command-line as you can to disable all the libcurl features that you
know your application is not going to need. Besides specifying the
--disable-PROTOCOL
flags for all the types of URLs your application will not
use, here are some other flags that can reduce the size of the library:
--disable-ares
(disables support for the C-ARES DNS library)--disable-cookies
(disables support for HTTP cookies)--disable-crypto-auth
(disables HTTP cryptographic authentication)--disable-ipv6
(disables support for IPv6)--disable-manual
(disables support for the built-in documentation)--disable-proxy
(disables support for HTTP and SOCKS proxies)--disable-unix-sockets
(disables support for UNIX sockets)--disable-verbose
(eliminates debugging strings and error code strings)--disable-versioned-symbols
(disables support for versioned symbols)--enable-symbol-hiding
(eliminates unneeded symbols in the shared library)--without-libidn
(disables support for the libidn DNS library)--without-librtmp
(disables support for RTMP)--without-openssl
(disables support for SSL/TLS)--without-zlib
(disables support for on-the-fly decompression)
The GNU compiler and linker have a number of options that can reduce the
size of the libcurl dynamic libraries on some platforms even further.
Specify them by providing appropriate CFLAGS
and LDFLAGS
variables on
the configure command-line, e.g.
CFLAGS="-Os -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections
-fno-unwind-tables -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables -flto"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-s -Wl,-Bsymbolic -Wl,--gc-sections"
Be sure also to strip debugging symbols from your binaries after compiling using 'strip' (or the appropriate variant if cross-compiling). If space is really tight, you may be able to remove some unneeded sections of the shared library using the -R option to objcopy (e.g. the .comment section).
Using these techniques it is possible to create a basic HTTP-only shared libcurl library for i386 Linux platforms that is only 113 KiB in size, and an FTP-only library that is 113 KiB in size (as of libcurl version 7.50.3, using gcc 5.4.0).
You may find that statically linking libcurl to your application will result in a lower total size than dynamically linking.
Note that the curl test harness can detect the use of some, but not all, of
the --disable
statements suggested above. Use will cause tests relying on
those features to fail. The test harness can be manually forced to skip the
relevant tests by specifying certain key words on the runtests.pl
command
line. Following is a list of appropriate key words:
--disable-cookies
!cookies--disable-manual
!--manual--disable-proxy
!HTTP\ proxy !proxytunnel !SOCKS4 !SOCKS5
PORTS
This is a probably incomplete list of known CPU architectures and operating systems that curl has been compiled for. If you know a system curl compiles and runs on, that is not listed, please let us know!
85 Operating Systems
AIX, AmigaOS, Android, Aros, BeOS, Blackberry 10, Blackberry Tablet OS, Cell OS, ChromeOS, Cisco IOS, Cygwin, Dragonfly BSD, eCOS, FreeBSD, FreeDOS, FreeRTOS, Fuchsia, Garmin OS, Genode, Haiku, HardenedBSD, HP-UX, Hurd, Illumos, Integrity, iOS, ipadOS, IRIX, LineageOS, Linux, Lua RTOS, Mac OS 9, macOS, Mbed, Micrium, MINIX, MorphOS, MPE/iX, MS-DOS, NCR MP-RAS, NetBSD, Netware, Nintendo Switch, NonStop OS, NuttX, OpenBSD, OpenStep, Orbis OS, OS/2, OS/400, OS21, Plan 9, PlayStation Portable, QNX, Qubes OS, ReactOS, Redox, RICS OS, Sailfish OS, SCO Unix, Serenity, SINIX-Z, Solaris, SunOS, Syllable OS, Symbian, Tizen, TPF, Tru64, tvOS, ucLinux, Ultrix, UNICOS, UnixWare, VMS, vxWorks, WebOS, Wii system software, Windows, Windows CE, Xbox System, z/OS, z/TPF, z/VM, z/VSE
22 CPU Architectures
Alpha, ARC, ARM, AVR32, Cell, HP-PA, Itanium, m68k, MicroBlaze, MIPS, Nios, OpenRISC, POWER, PowerPC, RISC-V, s390, SH4, SPARC, VAX, x86, x86-64, Xtensa