Question

I’m building libcurl to use with a project i’m working on, and after reading a little on how to build it properly i’ve found 2 ways to do it.

Method 1:
(edited Makefile in root directory to change “VC=vc6” to “VC=vc10”)
C:\dev\curl-7.25.0>set ZLIB_PATH=C:\dev\zlib-1.2.6
C:\dev\curl-7.25.0>nmake vc-zlib

Method 2:
(Put necessary files for zlib in ../deps & edit Makefile to make USE_IDN=no actually work)
C:\dev\curl-7.25.0\winbuild>nmake /f Makefile.vc mode=static VC=10 WITH_ZLIB=sta
tic DEBUG=no USE_IDN=no WITH_DEVEL=../deps

Both work with no errors.

The scary part is, the outputted libcurl.lib files are different sizes.
So is there any libcurl gurus out there that can tell me the difference between these 2 build methods, and which is recommended to be used?

Answer 1

So what I’ve figured out so far is method 1 requires you to link your application with Ws2_32.lib and Wldap32.lib, where method 2 doesn’t (probably the reason for the additional size).

Also method 1 has a slightly smaller output executable.

I’m really curious if there are any other differences though.