If you're dense like I am, spare yourself the trouble on an Ubuntu system (probably Debian too) and...
$ sudo apt-get php5-curl
Then feel dumb, but not as dumb as me.
Instalación
Para poder usar estas funciones, se debe compilar PHP añadiendo el parámetro --with-curl[=DIR], donde DIR apunta al directorio que contiene los directorios lib y include de la librería. En el directorio include, debe existir una carpeta llamada "curl" y que contiene los archivos easy.h y curl.h. Además, debe existir un archivo llamado libcurl.a en el directorio "lib". A partir de la versión de PHP 4.3.0 se puede configurar que PHP haga uso de CURL para el manejo de las conexiones con URLs, mediante la opción --with-curlwrappers.
Note: Nota para los usuarios de plataformas Windows
Para activar este módulo en entornos Windows, se deben copiar los archivos libeay32.dll y ssleay32.dll que se encuentran en la carpeta DLL del directorio PHP/Win32 a la carpeta SYSTEM de Windows, que normalmente se encuentra en C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32 o C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.
Instalación
23-Sep-2008 09:45
21-Aug-2008 05:23
@comments at adstation-systems dot com
You never need to compile at windows (unless you want to play with it). So it's not confusing at all.
09-Aug-2008 08:23
You may be confused, as I was, by the instructions for installing cURL in php. The instruction "To use PHP's cURL support you must also compile PHP --with-curl[=DIR]..." was murky to me, since I didn't compile php when I installed it. I just copied all of the necessary files to the correct folders as described very clearly in the php manual.
I am using Windows XP and Apache with php 5.1.6. In this situation, and it may apply to php versions of 5.0 and later, all one needs to do is remove the ";" from the front of the directive extension=php_curl.dll. You should also check to make certain that libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll are in your php directory with the other dll's. This directory should already be in you path, so the instruction to put them in you path is not critical.
You can then run phpinfo() and you should see a heading for curl in the listing.
Succinctly, my installation of cURL consisted of removing the semi-colon in front of the ;extension=php_curl.dll line in php.ini, saving php.ini and restarting Apache. You may wish to try this if you are using php 5.0 and later and are having difficulty understanding the instructions on the cURL installation page at php.net
You might also find the information at http://curl.phptrack.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=52 useful.
21-Jul-2008 09:21
If you are using WAMPserver, you can enable the cURL extensions by
Left-click on WAMPserver tray icon>PHP>PHP extensions> Check php_curl.
Its already loaded on your disk, you have to activate it.
18-Jul-2008 08:40
If you are using XAMPP (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/index.html) all you have to do is uncomment this line (line 582):
extension=php_curl.dll
in the xampp\apache\bin\php.ini file.
