Salut Xavier,

thanks for your quick answer.

> zlib is required for HTTP decompression, and for the internal cache.

So the answer is probably "no, you can't omit it" and Q2 is obsolete
therefore.

> You just need to install the zlib-devel package

I have donwloaded, configured and compiled zlib successfully, but I don't have
root privileges, so I can't 'make install'.

> You also need the libz.so devel link.

OK, I have my personal zlib in $HOME/bin/zlib-1.2.5/ , and yes there is a link
libz.so -> libz.so.1.2.5 in that directory. and some more of it:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 13 16. Sep 15:25 ../zlib-1.2.5/libz.so -> libz.so.1.2.5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 13 16. Sep 15:25 ../zlib-1.2.5/libz.so.1 -> libz.so.1.2.5
-rwxr-xr-x 1 109107 16. Sep 15:25 ../zlib-1.2.5/libz.so.1.2.5

So I tried to 'configure' as follows but none of this works:

./configure --with-zlib=$HOME/bin/zlib-1.2.5
./configure --with-zlib=$HOME/bin/zlib-1.2.5/

Each of which is stopping with:

...
checking zlib.h usability... no
checking zlib.h presence... no
checking for zlib.h... no
checking zlib in DIR... failed
configure: error: either specify a valid zlib installation with
--with-zlib=DIR or disable zlib usage with --without-zlib

with DIR being whatever specified as --with-zlib=DIR argument.

BTW: I added both directories to my PATH as well, just to make sure:

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin/zlib-1.2.5:$HOME/bin/httrack-3.44.1

Any idea what may be wrong?
Thanks again,
Willy