How do I set up curl to permanently use a proxy?

Many UNIX programs respect the http_proxy environment variable, curl included. The format curl accepts is [protocol://]<host>[:port].

In your shell configuration:

export http_proxy http://proxy.server.com:3128

For proxying HTTPS requests, set https_proxy as well.

Curl also allows you to set this in your .curlrc file (_curlrc on Windows), which you might consider more permanent:

http_proxy=http://proxy.server.com:3128

You can make a alias in your ~/.bashrc file :

alias curl="curl -x <proxy_host>:<proxy_port>"

Another solution is to use (maybe the better solution) the ~/.curlrc file (create it if it does not exist) :

proxy = <proxy_host>:<proxy_port>