curl-impersonate/INSTALL.md

Building and installing curl-impersonate

This guide shows how to compile and install curl-impersonate and libcurl-impersonate from source. The build process takes care of downloading dependencies, patching them, compiling them and finally compiling curl itself with the needed patches. There are currently two build options depending on your use case:

• Native build using Makefile
• Docker container build

There are two versions of curl-impersonate for technical reasons. The chrome version is used to impersonate Chrome, Edge and Safari. The firefox version is used to impersonate Firefox.

Native build

Currently tested for Linux only. Work on porting to Mac is in progress.

Install dependencies for building all the components:

sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config cmake ninja-build curl autoconf automake libtool
# For the Firefox version only
sudo apt install python3-pip python-is-python3
pip install gyp-next
export PATH="$PATH:~/.local/bin" # Add gyp to PATH
# For the Chrome vesion only
sudo apt install golang-go

Clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/lwthiker/curl-impersonate.git
cd curl-impersonate

Generate the configure script:

autoconf

Configure and compile:

mkdir build && cd build
../configure
# Build and install the Firefox version
make firefox-build
sudo make firefox-install
# Build and install the Chrome version
make chrome-build
sudo make chrome-install
# You may need to update the linker's cache to find libcurl-impersonate
sudo ldconfig
# Optionally remove all the build files
cd ../ && rm -Rf build

This will install curl-impersonate, libcurl-impersonate and the wrapper scripts to /usr/local. To change the installation path, pass --prefix=/path/to/install/ to the configure script.

After installation you can run the wrapper scripts, e.g.:

curl_ff98 https://www.wikipedia.org
curl_chrome99 https://www.wikipedia.org

or run directly with you own flags:

curl-impersonate-ff https://www.wikipedia.org
curl-impersonate-chrome https://www.wikipedia.org

Static compilation

To compile curl-impersonate statically with libcurl-impersonate, pass --enable-static to the configure script.

Docker build

The Docker build is a bit more reproducible and serves as the reference implementation. It creates a Debian-based Docker image with the binaries.

Chrome version

chrome/Dockerfile is a debian-based Dockerfile that will build curl with all the necessary modifications and patches. Build it like the following:

docker build -t curl-impersonate-chrome chrome/

The resulting image contains a /build/out directory with the following:

• curl-impersonate-chrome, curl-impersonate - The curl binary that can impersonate Chrome/Edge/Safari. It is compiled statically against libcurl, BoringSSL, and libnghttp2 so that it won't conflict with any existing libraries on your system. You can use it from the container or copy it out. Tested to work on Ubuntu 20.04.
• curl_chrome98, curl_chrome99, ... - Wrapper scripts that launch curl-impersonate with all the needed flags.
• libcurl-impersonate-chrome.so, libcurl-impersonate.so - libcurl compiled with impersonation support. See libcurl-impersonate below for more details.

You can use them inside the docker, copy them out using docker cp or use them in a multi-stage docker build.

Firefox version

Build with:

docker build -t curl-impersonate-ff firefox/

The resulting image contains a /build/out directory with the following:

• curl-impersonate-ff, curl-impersonate - The curl binary that can impersonate Firefox. It is compiled statically against libcurl, nss, and libnghttp2 so that it won't conflict with any existing libraries on your system. You can use it from the container or copy it out. Tested to work on Ubuntu 20.04.
• curl_ff91esr, curl_ff95, ... - Wrapper scripts that launch curl-impersonate with all the needed flags.
• libcurl-impersonate-ff.so, libcurl-impersonate.so - libcurl compiled with impersonation support. See libcurl-impersonate below for more details.

If you use it outside the container, install the following dependency:

• sudo apt install libnss3. Even though nss is statically compiled into curl-impersonate, it is still necessary to install libnss3 because curl dynamically loads libnssckbi.so, a file containing Mozilla's list of trusted root certificates. Alternatively, use curl -k to disable certificate verification.