Networking Libraries

These applications are support libraries for other applications in the book. It is unlikely that you would just install these libraries, you will generally find that you will be referred to this chapter to satisfy a dependency of other applications.

cURL-7.13.1

Introduction to cURL

The cURL package contains curl and its support library. This is useful for transferring files with URL syntax. This ability to both download and redirect files can be incorporated into other programs to support functions like streaming media.

Package information

cURL dependencies

Optional (for running the test suite)

Stunnel-4.07 (for running HTTPS and FTPS tests) and Valgrind (not used if building the shared library)

Installation of cURL

Install cURL by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make

Now, as the root user:

make install &&
find docs -name "Makefile*" \
       -o -name "*.1" \
       -o -name "*.3" | xargs rm &&
install -v -d -m755 /usr/share/doc/curl-7.13.1 &&
cp -v -R docs/* /usr/share/doc/curl-7.13.1

Command explanations

--with-gssapi: This parameter adds Kerberos 5 support to libcurl.

Contents

Installed Programs: curl and curl-config
Installed Library: libcurl.[so,a]
Installed Directories: /usr/include/curl, /usr/share/curl and /usr/share/doc/curl-7.13.1

Short Descriptions

curl

is a client that can get documents from or send documents to any of the following protocols: HTTP, HTTPS (needs OpenSSL-0.9.7e), FTP, GOPHER, DICT, TELNET, LDAP (needs OpenLDAP-2.2.20 at run time) or FILE.

curl-config

prints information about the last compile, like libraries linked to and prefix setting.

libcurl.[so,a]

provides the API functions required by curl and other programs.