To make use of many of ELinks features you will need to have some external libraries and utility programs installed on your system. It is recommended to have the following libraries and programs installed:
| Dependency | Description |
|---|---|
| Lua or Guile | Makes it possible to write scripting plugins. See the Elinks - Lua interface for more info. |
| zlib 1.2.0.2 or later | For handling gzip or deflate compressed documents both locally and sent from server. |
| bzip2 | Likewise, for bzip2 compressed documents. |
| LZMA Utils | Likewise, for LZMA compressed documents. Version 4.32.5 should work. XZ Utils does not work. |
| OpenSSL or GNU TLS | For handling secure HTTP browsing. |
| pkg-config | Needed for locating some libraries (at least GNU TLS and TRE) |
| GPM | General Purpose Mouse for mouse support. |
| expat | XML Parser Toolkit needed for XBEL support. |
| TRE | For regexp searching. Version 0.7.5 works. |
| libsmbclient | Library needed for smb:// protocol support. |
| rxvt-unicode | For terminal emulator which supports 88 colors. |
| xterm with 256 colors | Program atleast patch level 179 or rxvt program from version 2.7.9 for support of 256 colors. Newer PuTTY also has 256 color support. |
| libidn | For internationalized domain names. |
| SpiderMonkey | Mozilla's JavaScript engine for getting JavaScript/ECMAScript support in ELinks. See also notes on ECMAScript support. |
When compiling, you also need the header files for the libraries. Most OS
distributors put a given library's headers in a package separate from the
library itself; this package usually has -dev or similar appended to its
name.