archoncap2 / axel

light command line download accelerator

AXEL

Axel — Light command line download accelerator for Linux and Unix

1. Help this project

2. What is Axel?

3. Building from source

4. Install on macOS with Homebrew

5. Building on macOS with Homebrew

6. Related projects

7. License

8. Help this project

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Axel needs your help. If you are a programmer and if you wants to help a nice project, this is your opportunity.

My name is Eriberto and I am not a C developer. I imported Axel from its old repository[1] to GitHub (the original homepage and developers are inactive). After this, I applied all patches found in Debian project and other places for this program. All my initial work was registered in ChangeLog file (version 2.5 and later releases). I also maintain Axel packaged in Debian[2].

If you are interested to help Axel, read the CONTRIBUTING.md file.

[1] https://alioth.debian.org/projects/axel [2] https://packages.qa.debian.org/a/axel.html

2. What is Axel?

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Axel tries to accelerate the downloading process by using multiple connections for one file, similar to DownThemAll and other famous programs. It can also use multiple mirrors for one download.

Using Axel, you will get files faster from Internet. So, Axel can speed up a download up to 60% (approximately, according to some tests).

Axel tries to be as light as possible, so it might be useful as a wget clone (and other console based programs) on byte-critical systems.

Axel supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and FTPS protocols.

Axel was originally developed by Wilmer van der Gaast. Thanks for your efforts. Over time, Axel got several contributions from people. Please, see the files AUTHORS and CREDITS.

3. Building from source

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Run ./autogen.sh to create the configure script, then proceed with the instructions in INSTALL. The basic actions for most users, after ./autogen.sh, is running ./configure, make and make install.

To build without SSL/TLS support, use ./configure --without-openssl

4. Install on macOS with Homebrew

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brew install axel

5. Building on macOS with Homebrew

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Install the following homebrew packages: brew install automake gettext openssl

You'll need to provide some extra options to autogen.sh and configure so they can find gettext and openssl.

GETTEXT=/usr/local/opt/gettext
OPENSSL=/usr/local/opt/openssl
PATH="$GETTEXT/bin:$PATH"
./autogen.sh -I$GETTEXT/share/aclocal/
CFLAGS="-I$GETTEXT/include -I$OPENSSL/include" LDFLAGS=-L$GETTEXT/lib ./configure

You can just run make as usual after these steps.

6. Related projects

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• aria2
• hget
• lftp
• nugget
• pget

7. License

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Axel is under GPL-2+ with OpenSSL exception.