- Home
- Download
- Contribute
- Support
- Cyrus SASL

# Compiling

These instructions are based on Debian 8.0 because it has to be based on something. Other Linux distributions will be similar in the broad ideas but may differ in the specifics. If you already have a preferred distro, use that (we assume you know how to use its package management system). If you don’t already have a preferred distro, maybe consider using Debian.

First make sure you have a copy of the source. You can either fetch the latest source from git, or using one of our release tarballs.

## Setting up dependencies

### Required Build Dependencies

Building a basic Cyrus that can send and receive email: the minimum libraries required to build a functional Cyrus.

Build Dependencies
Package | Debian | RedHat
--- | --- | ---
autoconf | autoconf | autoconf
automake | automake | automake
bison | bison | bison
Cyrus SASL | libsasl2-dev | cyrus-sasl-devel
flex | flex | flex
gcc | gcc | gcc
gperf | gperf | gperf
jansson | libjansson-dev | jansson-devel
libbsd | libbsd-dev | libbsd-devel
libtool | libtool | libtool
ICU | libicu-dev | libicu-devel
uuid | uuid-dev | libuuid-devel
openssl (Note about versions) | libssl-dev | openssl-devel
pkgconfig | pkg-config | pkgconfig
sqlite | libsqlite3-dev | sqlite-devel

To install all dependencies from packages on Debian Jessie, use this:

    sudo apt-get install git build-essential autoconf automake libtool \
        pkg-config bison flex libssl-dev libjansson-dev libxml2-dev \
        libsqlite3-dev libical-dev libsasl2-dev libpcre3-dev uuid-dev \
        libicu-dev
    sudo apt-get -t jessie-backports install libxapian-dev

### Optional Build Dependencies

The following build dependencies are optional, and enable functionality, code maintenance tasks or building the documentation.

#### Developers only

Package | Debian | RedHat | Required for `make check`? | Notes
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
CUnit | libcunit1-dev | cunit-devel | yes | Development headers for compiling Cyrus IMAP’s unit tests.
perl(ExtUtils::MakeMaker) | ?? | ?? | no | Perl library to assist in building extensions to Perl. Configure option: `--with-perl`
libdb-dev | libdb-dev | libdb-devel | no | The -dev package must match the version of libdb you already have installed (assuming it’s probably already installed). On Debian 8.0, `libdb5.3-dev` is needed, but `libdb5.1-dev` on 7.8.
perl-devel | perl-dev | perl-devel | no | Perl development headers to allow building binary perl libraries. Needs version 5+. Configure option: `--with-perl`
perl(Pod::POM::View::Restructured) |  |  |  | Perl library to generate man pages. This has to be available to the system-wide perl interpreter, found by `which`: `./configure --with-perl` is not honoured.
python(Sphinx) |  |  |  | Python library needed for building the documentation
valgrind | valgrind | valgrind | no | Performance and memory testing.
xxd |  |  |  | For rebuilding the _js.h files, for CalDAV and CardDAV support.

#### SASL Authentication

Package | Debian | RedHat | Required for `make check`? | Notes
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Cyrus SASL Plain | libsasl2-modules | cyrus-sasl-plain | yes | Cyrus SASL package that ships the library required to pass Cyrus IMAP’s PLAIN authentication unit tests.
Cyrus SASL MD5 | libsasl2-modules | cyrus-sasl-md5 | yes | Cyrus SASL library required to pass Cyrus IMAP’s DIGEST-MD5 authentication unit tests
sasl binaries | sasl2-bin | sasl2-bin | no | Administration tools for managing SASL
Kerberos | libsasl2-modules-gssapi-mit | krb5-devel | no | Development headers required to enable Kerberos v5 authentication capabilities. Otherwise also known as the authentication mechanism GSSAPI. Configure option: `--with-krbimpl=mit`

#### Alternate database formats

Package | Debian | RedHat | Required for `make check`? | Notes
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
lmdb | lmdb-dev | lmdb | no | Lightning Memory-Mapped Database Manager (LMDB) backend for Cyrus IMAP databases. LMDB requires database environments to be set to a (user-configurable) maximum size. The Cyrus backend uses 512MB as default size. Cyrus installations may override this by setting the environment variable CYRUSDB_LMDB_MAXSIZE. The value of this variable must be an integer, optionally followed (without space) by ‘mb’ or ‘gb’ to define the maximum size in bytes, megabytes or gigabytes. The size should be a multiple of the OS page size.
mysql or mariadb | libmysqlclient-dev or libmariadb-dev | mysql-devel or mariadb-devel | no | MariaDB or MySQL development headers, to allow Cyrus IMAP to use it as the backend for its databases. Configure option: `--with-mysql`, `--with-mysql-incdir`, `--with-mysql-libdir`
postgresql | postgresql-dev | postgresql-devel | no |

#### CalDAV and/or CardDAV

Package | Debian | RedHat | Required for `make check`? | Notes
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
libical | libical-dev | libical-devel | no | libical >= 0.48 required for scheduling support. Note: Linux distributions Enterprise Linux 6 and Debian Squeeze are known to ship outdated libical packages versions 0.43 and 0.44 respectively. The platforms will not support scheduling.
libxml | libxml2-dev | libxml2-devel |  | no

#### Other

Package | Debian | RedHat | Required for `make check`? | Notes
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
SSL certificates | ssl-cert-dev | mod_ssl | no | Used if you’re installing SSL certificates
ClamAV |  |  |  | Used by cyr_virusscan.
net-snmp | libsnmp-dev | net-snmp-devel | no | version 4.2 or higher
openldap | libldap2-dev | openldap-devel | no | Development headers to enable ptloader to interface with LDAP directly, for canonification of login usernames to mailbox names, and verification of login usernames, ACL subjects and group membership. Configure option: `--with-ldap`
tcp_wrappers | tcp_wrappers | xx | no |
transfig | transfig | xx | no | also known as fig2dev
pcre |  |  |  | PCRE 1 (or 8) - for regular expression matching
perl(Term::ReadLine) |  |  |  | Perl library needed by cyradm
zlib | zlib1g-dev | zlib-devel | no | Compression support for httpd
libbrotli |  |  |  | Brotli compression support for httpd
nghttp2 | libnghttp2-dev | libnghttp2-devel | no | HTTP/2 support for httpd

Install tools for building
  - `sudo apt-get install build-essential`
Optionally install dependencies for building the docs.
  - `sudo pip install python-sphinx`
  - `sudo cpan install Pod::POM::View::Restructured`

## Compile Cyrus

There are additional compile and installation steps if you are using Xapian for searching.

### Default build: mail only

    $ autoreconf -i
    $ ./configure [options]

Check the summary after `./configure` completes to ensure it matches your expectations.

To view all options, and disable or enable specific features, please see:

    # ./configure --help

Tip

Passing environment variables as an argument to configure, rather than setting them in the environment before running configure, allows their values to be logged in config.log. This is useful for diagnosing problems.

### Optional dependencies

Some features are disabled by default and must be explicitly enabled via configure.

Sieve is enabled by default.

#### CalDAV and CardDAV

> `./configure --enable-http --enable-calalarmd`

#### Murder

> `./configure --enable-murder`

#### Replication

> `./configure --enable-replication`

### Compile

    cd /path/to/cyrus-imapd

    autoreconf -i -s   # generates a configure script, and its various dependencies

    ./configure CFLAGS="-W -Wno-unused-parameter -g -O0 -Wall -Wextra -Werror -fPIC" \
    --enable-coverage --enable-calalarmd --enable-autocreate \
    --enable-nntp --enable-http --enable-unit-tests \
    --enable-replication --with-openssl=yes --enable-murder \
    --enable-idled --prefix=/usr/cyrus

    make lex-fix   # you need this if compile fails with errors from sieve/sieve.c

    make

The `--prefix` option sets where Cyrus is installed to.

It may be of use to also add `--std=gnu99` to the `CFLAGS`. That generates TONS of warnings.

Having problems with compilation or linking?

If you’re running on Debian, and you install to `/usr/local`, you may need to update your library loader. Edit `/etc/ld.so.conf.d/x86_64-linux-gnu.conf` so it includes the following additional line:

    /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu

Without this, when you attempt to start Cyrus, it reports `error while loading shared libraries: libcyrus_imap.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory` because it can’t find the Cyrus library in /usr/local/lib.

### Check

    make check    # this runs the cunit tests.

This runs the cunit tests and is used for testing that the libraries support all the expected behaviour. If this fails, please report it to the cyrus-dev mailing list with details of your source version, operating system and affected libraries.

Next: installing Cyrus.