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.
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 If the version is out of date, please create an issue or pull request on the vcpkg repository.
If you get your code off a git repository instead of a release tarball, see
the GIT-INFO.md
file in the root directory for specific instructions on how
to proceed.
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, 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 runtime 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 runtime linker:
LDFLAGS=-Wl,-R/usr/local/ssl/lib ./configure --with-openssl
To force a static library compile, disable the shared library creation by running configure like:
./configure --disable-shared
The configure script is primarily done to work with shared/dynamic third party dependencies. When linking with shared libraries, the dependency "chain" is handled automatically by the library loader - on all modern systems.
If you instead link with a static library, you need to provide all the dependency libraries already at the link command line.
Figuring out all the dependency libraries for a given library is hard, as it might involve figuring out the dependencies of the dependencies and they vary between platforms and change between versions.
When using static dependencies, the build scripts mostly assume that you, the
user, provide all the necessary additional dependency libraries as additional
arguments in the build. With configure, by setting LIBS
or LDFLAGS
on the
command line.
Building statically is not for the faint of heart.
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 tries to auto-detect a decent default. If you want to alter it, you can select how to deal with each individual library.
These options are provided to select the TLS backend to use.
--with-amissl
--with-bearssl
--with-gnutls
.--with-mbedtls
--with-openssl
(also for BoringSSL, AWS-LC, LibreSSL, and quictls)--with-rustls
--with-schannel
--with-secure-transport
--with-wolfssl
You can build curl with multiple TLS backends at your choice, but some TLS backends cannot be combined: if you build with an OpenSSL fork (or wolfSSL), you cannot add another OpenSSL fork (or wolfSSL) simply because they have conflicting identical symbol names.
When you build with multiple TLS backends, you can select the active one at runtime when curl starts up.
HTTP/3 needs QUIC and QUIC needs TLS. Building libcurl with HTTP/3 and QUIC support is not compatible with the MultiSSL feature: they are mutually exclusive. If you need MultiSSL in your build, you cannot have HTTP/3 support and vice versa.
libcurl can only use a single TLS library with QUIC and that same TLS library needs to be used for the other TLS using protocols.
When the configure script checks for third-party libraries, it adds those
directories to the LDFLAGS
variable and then tries linking to see if it
works. When successful, the found directory is kept in the LDFLAGS
variable
when the script continues to execute and do more tests and possibly check for
more libraries.
This can make subsequent checks for libraries wrongly detect another
installation in a directory that was previously added to LDFLAGS
by another
library check.
Building for Windows XP is required as a minimum.
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.
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 multi-threaded dynamic C runtime.
If you get linkage errors read section 5.7 of the FAQ document.
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 see the configure fail toward the end.
Run make
Requires DJGPP in the search path and pointing to the Watt-32 stack via
WATT_PATH=c:/djgpp/net/watt
.
Run make -f Makefile.dist djgpp
in the root curl dir.
For build configuration options, please see the mingw-w64 section.
Notes:
DJGPP 2.04 beta has a sscanf()
bug so the URL parsing is not done
properly. Use DJGPP 2.03 until they fix it.
Compile Watt-32 (and OpenSSL) with the same version of DJGPP. Otherwise
things go wrong because things like FS-extensions and errno
values have
been changed between releases.
Run make -f Makefile.dist amiga
in the root curl dir.
For build configuration options, please see the mingw-w64 section.
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 for the full list.
If you want to set any of these defines you have the following options:
lib/config-win32.h
lib/curl_setup.h
winbuild/Makefile.vc
Note: The pre-processor settings can be found using the Visual Studio IDE under "Project -> Properties -> Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> Preprocessor".
In order to compile libcurl and curl using BSD-style lwIP TCP/IP stack it is
necessary to make the definition of the preprocessor symbol USE_LWIPSOCK
visible to libcurl and curl compilation processes. To set this definition you
have the following alternatives:
lib/config-win32.h
and src/config-win32.h
winbuild/Makefile.vc
Note: The pre-processor settings can be found using the Visual Studio IDE under "Project -> Properties -> Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> Preprocessor".
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.
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.
When building an application that uses the static libcurl library on Windows,
you must add -DCURL_STATICLIB
to your CFLAGS
. Otherwise the linker looks
for dynamic import symbols.
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 are using curl in one of those earlier versions of Windows you should choose another SSL backend such as OpenSSL.
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
.
When Secure Transport is in use, the curl options --cacert
and --capath
and their libcurl equivalents, are 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
The above command lines 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 $(pwd)/artifacts --with-secure-transport
make -j8
make install
In all above, the built libraries and executables can be found in the
artifacts
folder.
When building curl for Android it is recommended to use a Linux/macOS
environment since using curl's configure
script is the easiest way to build
curl for Android. Before you can build curl for Android, you need to install
the Android NDK first. This can be done using the SDK Manager that is part of
Android Studio. Once you have installed the Android NDK, you need to figure
out where it has been installed and then set up some environment variables
before launching configure
. On macOS, those variables could look like this
to compile for aarch64
and API level 29:
export ANDROID_NDK_HOME=~/Library/Android/sdk/ndk/25.1.8937393 # Point into your NDK.
export HOST_TAG=darwin-x86_64 # Same tag for Apple Silicon. Other OS values here: https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/other_build_systems#overview
export TOOLCHAIN=$ANDROID_NDK_HOME/toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/$HOST_TAG
export AR=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/llvm-ar
export AS=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/llvm-as
export CC=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/aarch64-linux-android21-clang
export CXX=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/aarch64-linux-android21-clang++
export LD=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/ld
export RANLIB=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/llvm-ranlib
export STRIP=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/llvm-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 does not give you SSL/TLS support. If you need SSL/TLS, you
have to build curl with a SSL/TLS library, e.g. OpenSSL, because it is
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 $TOOLCHAIN/sysroot/usr/include
. Now you can build curl
for Android using OpenSSL like this:
LIBS="-lssl -lcrypto -lc++" # For OpenSSL/BoringSSL. In general, you need to the SSL/TLS layer's transitive dependencies if you are linking statically.
./configure --host aarch64-linux-android --with-pic --disable-shared --with-openssl="$TOOLCHAIN/sysroot/usr"
For IBM i (formerly OS/400), you can use curl in two different ways:
packages/OS400/README
for the ILE
specific build instructions.There are some additional limitations and quirks with curl on this platform; they affect both environments.
By default, jobs in IBM i does 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 asynchronous DNS
were enabled, you get messages like:
getaddrinfo() thread failed to start
Do not panic. curl and your program are not broken. You can fix this by:
QIBM_MULTI_THREADED
to Y
before starting
your program. This can be done at whatever scope you feel is appropriate.ALWMLTTHD
parameter set to *YES
.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 on
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 gets
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
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 others like the following that
may be relevant in some environments: -march=X
, -mthumb
, -m32
,
-mdynamic-no-pic
, -flto
, -fdata-sections
, -ffunction-sections
,
-fno-unwind-tables
, -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables
,
-fno-record-gcc-switches
, -fsection-anchors
, -fno-plt
,
-Wl,--gc-sections
, -Wl,-Bsymbolic
, -Wl,-s
,
For example, this is how to combine a few of these options:
./configure CC=gcc CFLAGS='-Os -ffunction-sections' LDFLAGS='-Wl,--gc-sections'...
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 do not
use, here are some other flags that can reduce the size of the library by
disabling support for some feature (run ./configure --help
to see them all):
--disable-alt-svc
(HTTP Alt-Svc)--disable-ares
(the C-ARES DNS library)--disable-cookies
(HTTP cookies)--disable-basic-auth
(cryptographic authentication)--disable-bearer-auth
(cryptographic authentication)--disable-digest-auth
(cryptographic authentication)--disable-kerberos-auth
(cryptographic authentication)--disable-negotiate-auth
(cryptographic authentication)--disable-aws
(cryptographic authentication)--disable-dateparse
(date parsing for time conditionals)--disable-dnsshuffle
(internal server load spreading)--disable-doh
(DNS-over-HTTP)--disable-form-api
(POST form API)--disable-get-easy-options
(lookup easy options at runtime)--disable-headers-api
(API to access headers)--disable-hsts
(HTTP Strict Transport Security)--disable-http-auth
(all HTTP authentication)--disable-ipv6
(IPv6)--disable-libcurl-option
(--libcurl C code generation support)--disable-manual
(--manual built-in documentation)--disable-mime
(MIME API)--disable-netrc
(.netrc file)--disable-ntlm
(NTLM authentication)--disable-ntlm-wb
(NTLM winbind)--disable-progress-meter
(graphical progress meter in library)--disable-proxy
(HTTP and SOCKS proxies)--disable-pthreads
(multi-threading)--disable-socketpair
(socketpair for asynchronous name resolving)--disable-threaded-resolver
(threaded name resolver)--disable-tls-srp
(Secure Remote Password authentication for TLS)--disable-unix-sockets
(Unix sockets)--disable-verbose
(eliminates debugging strings and error code strings)--disable-versioned-symbols
(versioned symbols)--enable-symbol-hiding
(eliminates unneeded symbols in the shared library)--without-brotli
(Brotli on-the-fly decompression)--without-libpsl
(Public Suffix List in cookies)--without-nghttp2
(HTTP/2 using nghttp2)--without-ngtcp2
(HTTP/2 using ngtcp2)--without-zstd
(Zstd on-the-fly decompression)--without-libidn2
(internationalized domain names)--without-librtmp
(RTMP)--without-ssl
(SSL/TLS)--without-zlib
(on-the-fly decompression)Be sure also to strip debugging symbols from your binaries after compiling
using 'strip' or an option like -s
. If space is really tight, you may be able
to gain a few bytes by removing 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 libcurl shared library for i386 Linux platforms that is only 130 KiB in size (as of libcurl version 8.6.0, using gcc 13.2.0).
You may find that statically linking libcurl to your application results in a lower total size than dynamically linking.
The curl test harness can detect the use of some, but not all, of the
--disable
statements suggested above. Use of these can 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 for those configure options
that are not automatically detected:
--disable-cookies
!cookies--disable-dateparse
!RETRY-AFTER !CURLOPT_TIMECONDITION
!CURLINFO_FILETIME
!If-Modified-Since
!curl_getdate
!-z
--disable-libcurl-option
!--libcurl
--disable-verbose
!verbose\ logsThis 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!
AIX, AmigaOS, Android, ArcoOS, Aros, Atari FreeMiNT, BeOS, Blackberry 10,
Blackberry Tablet OS, Cell OS, CheriBSD, Chrome OS, Cisco IOS, DG/UX,
Dragonfly BSD, DR DOS, eCOS, FreeBSD, FreeDOS, FreeRTOS, Fuchsia, Garmin OS,
Genode, Haiku, HardenedBSD, HP-UX, Hurd, Illumos, Integrity, iOS, ipadOS, IRIX,
Linux, Lua RTOS, Mac OS 9, macOS, Mbed, Meego, Micrium, MINIX, Moblin, MorphOS,
MPE/iX, MS-DOS, NCR MP-RAS, NetBSD, Netware, NextStep, 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, ROS, RTEMS,
Sailfish OS, SCO Unix, Serenity, SINIX-Z, SkyOS, Solaris, Sortix, SunOS,
Syllable OS, Symbian, Tizen, TPF, Tru64, tvOS, ucLinux, Ultrix, UNICOS,
UnixWare, VMS, vxWorks, watchOS, Wear OS, WebOS, Wii system software, Wii U,
Windows, Windows CE, Xbox System, Xenix, Zephyr, z/OS, z/TPF, z/VM, z/VSE
Alpha, ARC, ARM, AVR32, C-SKY, CompactRISC, Elbrus, ETRAX, HP-PA, Itanium,
LoongArch, m68k, m88k, MicroBlaze, MIPS, Nios, OpenRISC, POWER, PowerPC,
RISC-V, s390, SH4, SPARC, Tilera, VAX, x86, Xtensa, z/arch