Installing a custom version of curl (command line tool)

Overview

curl is installed on all DreamHost servers by default, however, you may want to install a newer version depending on your needs. This article walks you through how to install a custom version of curl (command line tool).

These instructions explain how to install the curl command line tool. This is different from cURL. You can read more about that here:

Installing curl

  1. Log in to your server via SSH.
  2. Make sure you're in your user's home directory.
    [server]$ cd ~
  3. Locate the version you wish to install here:

    Right-click a .zip link and copy its URL. You can then run the following wget command to download the .zip file.

    [server]$ wget https://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.70.0.zip
  4. Unzip the file.
    [server]$ unzip curl-7.70.0.zip
  5. Navigate into this new directory.
    [server]$ cd curl-7.70.0
  6. Run the following to install:
    [server]$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/curl
    [server]$ make
    [server]$ make install
  7. Open your .bash_profile using nano or vim. For example:
    nano ~/.bash_profile
  8. Add this line to your .bash_profile:
    export PATH=$HOME/curl/bin:$PATH
  9. Update your .bash_profile to activate your new configuration.
    [server]$ . ~/.bash_profile
  10. Check the location and version of curl:
    [server]$ which curl
    /home/username/curl/bin/curl
    [server]$ curl --version
    curl 7.70.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.70.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1 zlib/1.2.11
    Release-Date: 2020-04-29
    Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps ldap ldaps pop3 pop3s rtsp smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp
    Features: AsynchDNS HTTPS-proxy IPv6 Largefile libz NTLM NTLM_WB SSL TLS-SRP UnixSockets

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