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Installing wget in Mac OS X 10.6

The exclusion of wget in OS X is rather mystifying.  In any case, its quite easy to build from source and this post will explore how to do just that.

First, you need to have Xcode installed with “Unix Dev Support” which includes gcc and other packages for software compilation.  Xcode is located on your Mac OS X install DVD under the “optional installs” section.  You can also download Xcode from Apple. If you aren’t sure if Xcode is already loaded on your system or not, if you don’t have a “Developer” folder listed in the top level of your HD, then it is not installed.

Ok, let’s proceed with the installation of wget.

1.) Download the latest version from: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/wget-latest.tar.gz to your Downloads folder.

2.) Extract the package:

cd ~/Downloads/
tar xvf wget-latest.tar.gz

3.) Build the package:

cd wget-1.12
./configure
sudo make install

4.) Verify by typing in “wget” in your terminal session.

That’s it! You can now delete all of the files you downloaded and uncompressed in the Downloads folder. Let me know if anyone has any questions.

Categories: Apple / Mac.

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