Building libcurl with SSL support on Windows

I'm using libcurl in a Win32 C++ application.

I have the curllib.vcproj project added to my solution and set my other projects to depend on it.

How do I build it with SSL support enabled?

Solution 1:

Well, since this post failed badly, I had to dig into the matter myself.

Also check out the other answers and comments for additional info regarding other versions etc.

EDIT: Since I posted this Q there seems to be ready-built binaries made available from the curl homepage. Check out James' answer.

So here goes:

Preprocessor

The following two symbols need to be fed to the preprocessor to enable SSL for libcurl:

USE_SSLEAY
USE_OPENSSL

(libcurl uses OpenSSL for SSL support)

Alternatively the symbols can be added directly to a file called setup.h in libcurl, but I'm not too happy about modifying code in 3rd party distributions unless I really have to.

Rebuilding the libcurl library, I now got some errors about OpenSSL include files not being found. Naturally, since I haven't set up the OpenSSL distribution properly yet.

Compiling OpenSSL binaries

I downloaded the OpenSSL 0.9.8 source distribution and unpacked it.

In the root of the source distribution there's a file called INSTALL.W32 which describes how to compile the OpenSSL binaries. The build chain requires perl, so I installed the latest version of ActivePerl.

I had some trouble with the build, which might not be applicable to all systems, but I'll go through it here in case somebody experiences the same.

According to INSTALL.W32:

Run the following commandline tasks with current directory set to the source distribution root:

1> perl Configure VC-WIN32 --prefix=c:/some/openssl/dir

(Where "c:/some/openssl/dir" should be replaced by the dir where OpenSSL should be installed. Don't use spaces in this path. The compilation further ahead will fail in that case)

2> ms\do_ms

For me this step was unsuccessful at first, since I lacked the environment variables OSVERSION and TARGETCPU. I set these to 5.1.2600 and x86 respectively. You may get complaint about OSVERSION being "insane", but look closer, this error is for WinCE and doesn't affect the Win32 setup. To get hold of your OS version, run the 'ver' command from a command prompt or run winver.exe.

3> nmake -f ms\nt.mak (for static library)

3> nmake -f ms\ntdll.mak (for DLL)

The source now compiles. Took approx 5 minutes on my laptop.

When compilation is completed, the libs or binaries have been placed in:

distroot/out32 - for static library build

distroot/out32dll - for DLL build

Building and linking

Now, back to visual studio and point out the libs and include path for headers. The include files are located in distroot/inc32/openssl.

Remember to add libeay32.lib and ssleay32.lib as linker input.

Rebuild the libcurl project.

Error!

Well at least for me with this version of OpenSSL. it complained about a struct typedef in one of the OpenSSL headers. I couldn't find any info on this. After an hour of googling I broke my own principle and commented out the typedef from the OpenSSL header, and luckily libcurl wasn't using that symbol so it built fine.

Update: As pointed out by Jason, this issue seems to have dissapeared as of version 1.0.0a.

Now, for confirming that SSL support is enabled for libcurl, run the following code:

curl_version_info_data * vinfo = curl_version_info( CURLVERSION_NOW );
if( vinfo->features & CURL_VERSION_SSL )
    // SSL support enabled
else
    // No SSL

Simple as that.

Solution 2:

Maybe this isn't the answer anyone is looking for, but I simply just downloaded the precompiled DLLs from this link found at http://curl.haxx.se/download.html

I ran the test that sharkin provided, and if( vinfo->features & CURL_VERSION_SSL ) proved to be true.

Solution 3:

Following Robert Oschler's advice, here is my comment on the question as answer :

You can build recent libcurl (2012) with native SSL support for windows using the preprocessor symbols: USE_WINDOWS_SSPI and USE_SCHANNEL instead of the OpenSSL ones.

Solution 4:

When compiling OpenSSL 1.0.0 on Windows with Visual Studio 2010, it eventually threw a 0x2 error:

NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0 \VC\BIN\cl.EXE"' : return code '0x2'

Stop.

It seems that this error will be thrown because of a flag in the perl Configure file, namely -WX. As the MSDN documentation states:

Treats all compiler warnings as errors. For a new project, it may be best to use /WX in all compilations; resolving all warnings will ensure the fewest possible hard-to-find code defects.

After removing the -WX occurrences in the Configure file and re-entering the commands stated here it built fine and passed all tests.

Solution 5:

In my case follow the curl README file was enough.
My configuration is the following:

Visual Studio 2015 (VC14)
Static library
Win64
curl version 7.57.0
OpenSSL 1.0.2

Compilation of libCurl

Download libcurl source there: https://curl.haxx.se/download.html
Uncompress the file and go to the folder curl-7.57.0\projects
Open the README file and follow the instructions, this lead me to do the following:
- Downloaded OpenSSL
- Extract it and rename it to openssl, put it aside the curl folder, this is important as you'll open the VS project that expect to find openssl there.
- Install Perl
- Execute the utility build-openssl.bat to perform the compilation of openSSL. With my settings this became the following:
  .\build-openssl.bat vc14 x64 release ..\..\openssl\
  just runs .\build-openssl.bat -help to know more about the parameters.
  After that you can see OpenSSL has been compiled as you got a new folder here: openssl\build\Win64
Open the Visual Studio project curl-7.57.0\projects\Windows\VC14\curl-all.sln
Be sure to set the visual studio project to the build configuration you need (LIB Release - LIB OpenSSL in my case)
Build all
The library is located at curl-7.57.0\build\Win64\VC14\LIB Release - LIB OpenSSL\libcurl.lib

Remarks

Don't forget to define the CURL_STATICLIB preprocessor in your own project
With static library, you will have to links with the dependencies of libcurl, see this answer
You might not want to depend on LDAP, in that case you can disable it by setting the preprocessor CURL_DISABLE_LDAP before you compile libcurl.