The phrase refers to acquiring a specific version of the libcurl library, version 4, in the form of a shared object file (indicated by the “.so” extension, common in Linux-based systems). This shared object contains compiled code that allows software to perform network operations, such as downloading data from a remote server. For example, a program might use the downloaded library file to retrieve an image or a document from a website.
Accessing this particular shared library is important because it provides applications with robust and versatile network communication capabilities. Benefits include support for numerous protocols (HTTP, FTP, etc.), SSL/TLS encryption, and proxy handling. Historically, libcurl has been a cornerstone for developers needing reliable network functionality within their applications, avoiding the need to implement such complex tasks from scratch and ensuring compatibility across systems using the same shared object.
