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AXEL

Axel — Light command line download accelerator for Linux and Unix

  • Help this project
  • What is Axel?
  • Building from source
  • Install on macOS with Homebrew
  • Building on macOS with Homebrew
  • Related projects
  • License

1. Help this project

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

Axel was imported from its old repository[1] to GitHub (the original homepage and developers are inactive). After this, all patches found in Debian project and other places for this program were applied. All initial work was registered in ChangeLog file (version 2.5 and later releases). Axel is being packaged in Debian[2].

If you are interested to help Axel, read the CONTRIBUTING.md file. Additionally, there is a group to discuss and to coordinate the development process[3]. You can also find other developers in the #axel channel on freenode.

[1] https://alioth.debian.org/projects/axel [2] https://packages.qa.debian.org/a/axel.html [3] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/axel-accelerator-dev

2. What is Axel?

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 AUTHORS and CREDITS files in source code.

3. Building from source

Build-time dependencies:

  • pkg-config
  • gettext
  • autopoint

Optional dependencies:

  • libssl (OpenSSL, LibreSSL or compatible) -- for SSL/TLS support.

Release tarballs contain a pre-generated buildsystem, but if you need to edit/patch it, or you're building from a copy of the repository, then you may need to run autoreconf -i to generate it. Further instructions are provided in the INSTALL file. The basic actions for most users are:

./configure && make && make install

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

Building on Ubuntu 16.04

$ sudo apt-get install autoconf pkg-config gettext autopoint libssl-dev
$ autoreconf -fiv
$ sudo su
# ./configure && make && make install

4. Install on macOS with Homebrew

brew install axel

5. Building on macOS with Homebrew

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

7. License

Axel is under GPL-2+ with OpenSSL exception.