How to install and build cURL and libcurl

May 9, 2012 at 2:28am

This Newbie is confused again. I Googled to find out where and how to install and build cURL and libcurl on my win7 64 bit c++ 2010 pro compiler and got the file: curl / winbuild / BUILD.WINDOWS.txt but, it looks like Greek to me.
It sure would be nice if someone could translate its data so it would be in a more understood format for this dummy newbie. . . like a step-by-step set of specific instructions telling me *exactly where. . . in what folder of the c:\ drive* should I put the unzipped cURL.exe file in? Presently I have the *cURL.exe application* and the *curl-ca-bundle.crt* in a folder on my c: drive, but I do not know how to install and build the libcurl so I can use cURL in a c++ program.
At present I am using another's sample code as a learning experience, but I am having build problems because I do not have cURL or libcurl installed and builded. My code is:
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 /* 
     * This is a very simple example of how to use libcurl from within 
     * a C++  program. The basic idea is that you want to retrieve the 
     * contents of a web page as a string. Obviously, you can replace 
     * the buffer object with anything you want and adjust elsewhere 
     * accordingly. 
     * 
     * Hope you find it useful.. 
     * 
     * Todd Papaioannou 
     */  
      
  
	#include <string>  
	#include <iostream>  
	
	#include <$(BOOST)\include>

	#include "curl/curl.h"

        
    using namespace std;  
      
    // Write any errors in here  
    static char errorBuffer[CURL_ERROR_SIZE];  
      
    // Write all expected data in here  
    static string buffer; 


I know there are more things wrong, however during this phase I'm working on just the curl code.
May 9, 2012 at 3:20am
If you use Makefile to compile, you need to specify certain compilation rules that include curl;
If you use IDE such as VS, you need to specify paths for include files and path for lib itself. I can't recall the exact entry you need to modify, but it seems to be in project setting, or something alike.

Hope it helps.
May 9, 2012 at 7:52am
To build libCurl in windows you need to generate VS2010 solution file (*.sln) first. To do it, you need to download and install Cmake (or most likely Cmake-GUI frontend).
May 9, 2012 at 6:17pm
I Googled for further instructions and got:http://geographika.co.uk/64-bit-curl-with-openssl-on-windows I downloaded the latest cURL and libcurl (curl-7.25.0.zip) and unzipped it in *D:|Projects* as directed by the above website. The instructions say to look for a vc6curl.dsw file. Here is my first problem. There are no *.dsw files in the unzipped folder. In the src folder there is a makefile.vc10, which did open in vc++ 2010. However, no other actions were allowed. I could not go to -> build -> configuration. I'm stuck. How do I install and build? Please give me a step-by-step instruction set. The instructions on the web don't seem to apply in my case. I'm too new to c++ and to libcurl to make sense of what they say. I'm using Win 7 64 bit visual studio 2010 pro in 64 bit mode compiler.
May 9, 2012 at 7:12pm
I goofed. I did build libcurl on my D: drive, but it ended up building a win32 build. How can I rebuild to have a 64 bit build? Thanks . . . . therry
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