Compile Aria2 1.15.2 with MinGW

Aria2 is a command-line download utility. It can be used to download files quickly from http(s), ftp, bittorrent, magnet and metalink locations. I prefer this handy tool over other programs, such as Free Download Manager and Frostwire because it's lean, fast and full of features. It took me a couple of days to compile Aria2 with all the features available. The following step-by-step guide will help you build your own aria2 program (aria2c.exe) the way I did.

1. Install MinGW
   

   Follow one of the following guides to install MingW:

   
   
   • Setting up MinGW64 with Cygwin
     
   • Installing MinGW on Windows
   
   
   
2. POSIX Threads
   

   Download the source for Pthreads library (pthreads-w32-2-9-1-release.tar.gz) and compile it like this:

   
   

   make clean GC-static
   cp pthread.h semaphore.h sched.h /mingw/include/
   cp libpthreadGC2.a /mingw/lib/libpthread.a

   
   
   
3. zlib
   

   Zlib is needed by the OpenSSL library below. Download the zlib source and compile it like this:

   
   

   make -f win32/Makefile.gcc
   make -f win32/Makefile.gcc install BINARY_PATH=/mingw/bin INCLUDE_PATH=/mingw/include LIBRARY_PATH=/mingw/lib

   
   
   
4. OpenSSL
   

   Aria2 requires either GnuTLS or OpenSSL for secure transfers. In this guide, OpenSSL is chosen over GnuTLS. Use 7-zip to unpack the tarball because it contains symbolic links.

   
   

   ./Configure -DHAVE_STRUCT_TIMESPEC -DPTW32_STATIC_LIB -L/mingw/lib -lz -lpthread -lws2_32 --prefix=/mingw threads zlib mingw
   make
   make install

   
   
   

5. Expat

   
   

   Aria2 can use either LibXML2 or Expat for XML parsing. In this guide, Expat will be used. Download the expat source and compile expat like this:

   
   

   ./configure --build=i686-w64-mingw32 --prefix=/mingw --disable-shared --enable-static
   make 
   make install

   
   
   

6. C-Ares

   
   

   C-Ares is a C library that performs DNS requests and resolves DNS names asynchronously. Download the C-ares source from c-ares.haxx.se and unpack it. Then, compile C-Ares as follows:

   
   

   ./configure --build=i686-w64-mingw32 --prefix=/mingw --disable-shared CPPFLAGS='-I/mingw/include -DCARES_STATICLIB'
   make
   make install

   
   
   

7. SQLite 3

   
   

   Download the SQLite source (sqlite-amalgamation-3071300.zip) and build SQLite 3:

   
   

   gcc -O2 -DNDEBUG=1 -DTHREADSAFE=1 -c *.c
   ar ru /mingw/lib/libsqlite3.a sqlite3.o
   cp -iv *.h /mingw/include

   
   

   Create sqlite3.pc and put it in /mingw/lib/pkgconfig.

   
   

   prefix=/mingw
   exec_prefix=${prefix}
   libdir=${exec_prefix}/lib
   includedir=${prefix}/include
   
   Name: SQLite
   Description: SQL database engine
   Version: 3.5
   
   Libs: -L${libdir} -lsqlite3
   Cflags: -I${includedir}

   
   
   

8. aria2c

   
   

   Finally, we are ready to compile Aria2. Download the Aria2 source from aria2.sf.net and unpack the source. Then, configure aria2 as follows:

   
   

   ./configure --build=i686-w64-mingw32 --prefix=/mingw --enable-threads=posix --with-ca-bundle=ca-bundle.crt --disable-nls LIBS='-lpthread -lws2_32 -lcares -lz' CPPFLAGS='-DPTW32_STATIC_LIB -DCARES_STATICLIB'
   

   
   
   
   
   

   Then, issue the following commands to compile Aria2:

   
   

   make
   make install

   
   
   
9. Optionally, strip and compress the executable aria2c.exe.
   
   

   strip aria2c.exe
   upx --best --strip-relocs=0 aria2c.exe

   
   

To download my Windows builds of aria2, go here.

Aria2c Usage

aria2c --file-allocation=prealloc ftp://192.168.1.64/pardus.iso

If aria2 aborts a download due to a connection error, you can resume the download any time using aria2c like this:

aria2c -c ftp://192.168.1.64/pardus.iso

To download files from URL's written in a file urls.txt to a folder Downloads, run aria2 as follows. The urls.txt should contain one download per line with URL's seperated by a tab:

aria2c -i urls.txt -d Downloads