How long to install CURL?

[sfullman]

Hi,

My web hosting service wants to charge me $145.00 per hour to install cURL (client URL) as part of my php 4.0 package, and they tell me that it will need them to re-compile PHP.

I wish I had my own server so I could learn all this stuff, but:

1) how long would it take a competent person to install cURL, and re-compile PHP?

2) out of curiosity, from someone who's a good programmer but little understands the back end, what does it mean to compile and why necessary to re-compile PHP after installing cURL?

Thank you,
Sam Fullman

[Anon]

1) It took me just over a quarter of an hour if I recall rightly; a fairly straightforward task. Roughly a matter of
./configure
make
make test
make install

And taking the

2) If you're a good programmer you'd know what compilation means; PHP need to be recompiled from the source code when cURL is installed because optional extensions like cURL and mcrypt are left out of most compilations to keep the footprint down; which means that it needs to be recompiled if you want support for those bits included.