Compiling — Cyrus IMAP 3.2.6 documentation

- Home
- Download
- Contribute
- Support
- Cyrus SASL

# Cyrus IMAP

# 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 download 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-imapd.

Package | Debian | RedHat | Notes
--- | --- | --- | ---
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 | version 55 or newer
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

### Build dependencies for additional functionality

The following dependencies enable additional functionality, help with code maintenance tasks or are required for building the documentation.

#### Developers only

The developer dependencies are required if you are building from git sources, have modified certain source files from the release tarball, or have configured with `--enable-maintainer-mode` in order to build a new package.

If you are building normally from a pure release tarball, then you don't need these dependencies. The files, these dependencies produce, have been pre-built and included in the release, and do not normally need to be re-built.

Package | Debian | RedHat | Required | Notes
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
perl-devel | perl-dev | perl-devel | no | Needed for building binary perl libraries, version 5+.
perl(ExtUtils::MakeMaker) |  |  | no | Needed for building extensions to Perl.
perl(Pod::POM::View::Restructured) |  |  | no | Needed to generate man pages. This has to be available to the system-wide perl interpreter, found by `which`.
python(GitPython) |  |  | no | Needed for building the documentation.
python(Sphinx) |  |  | no | Needed for building the documentation.
transfig | transfig | transfig | no | Also known as fig2dev, transfig is an artifact from the old days, and is only used for generation of a couple of png files in the legacy documentation (doc/legacy/murder.png and doc/legacy/netnews.png). One day it should be merged into the current documentation, cause then we can get rid of it: issues/1769.
valgrind | valgrind | valgrind | no | Performance and memory testing.
xxd | vim-common | vim-common | no | Needed for the _js.h files, for CalDAV and CardDAV support.

#### SASL Authentication

Package | Debian | RedHat | Required | Notes
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Cyrus SASL Plain | libsasl2-modules | cyrus-sasl-plain | yes/no | Required to pass Cyrus IMAP's PLAIN authentication unit tests.
Cyrus SASL MD5 | libsasl2-modules | cyrus-sasl-md5 | yes/no | 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 | yes/no | Development headers required to enable Kerberos v5 authentication capabilities, also known as the authentication mechanism GSSAPI. Configure option: `--with-krbimpl=mit`.

#### Alternate database formats

Package | Debian | RedHat | Required | Notes
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
mysql or mariadb | libmysqlclient-dev or libmariadb-dev | mysql-devel or mariadb-devel | yes/no | MariaDB or MySQL development headers, required to allow Cyrus IMAP to use it as the backend for its databases. Configure options: `--with-mysql`, `--with-mysql-incdir`, `--with-mysql-libdir`.
postgresql | postgresql-dev | postgresql-devel | yes/no | PostgreSQL development headers, required to allow Cyrus IMAP to use it as the backend for its databases. Configure option: `--with-pgsql`.

#### CalDAV, CardDAV, or JMAP (httpd subsystem)

Package | Debian | RedHat | Required | Notes
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
libbrotli | libbrotli-dev | brotli-devel | no | It provides Brotli compression support for http communications (otherwise only `deflate` and `gzip` (optionally) would be available).
libchardet | libchardet-dev | libchardet-devel | yes/no | It is used by the JMAP module of httpd to detect the character set of untagged 8-bit headers. Without it, cyrus-imapd will not do character-set detection. If some piece of data has no character set coming in, it will have no character set. Required for JMAP, but otherwise is not needed.
libical | libical-dev | libical-devel | yes | It provides calendaring functionality for CalDAV, which can't be used without this lib. Version 3.0.0 or higher is required.
libxml | libxml2-dev | libxml2-devel | yes | A fundamental lib for all *DAV functionality.
nghttp2 | libnghttp2-dev | libnghttp2-devel | no | HTTP/2 support for the entire httpd subsystem (*DAV & JMAP).
shapelib | shapelib | shapelib | yes/no | It is required for tzdist service to have geolocation support. Otherwise it is not needed. Version 1.3.0 or higher is required when using it.
wslay | libwslay-dev | wslay-devel | no | It provides WebSockets support in httpd. Only used with JMAP, otherwise not needed. Version 1.1.1 or higher is required when using it.
zlib | zlib1g-dev | zlib-devel | no | It provides gzip compression support for http communications.

#### Other

Package | Debian | RedHat | Required | Notes
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
CUnit | libcunit1-dev | cunit-devel | no | Development headers for compiling Cyrus IMAP's unit tests. Required to run `make check`.
SSL certificates | ssl-cert-dev | mod_ssl | no | Used if you're installing SSL certificates.
ClamAV | libclamav-dev | clamav-devel | no | It is used by cyr_virusscan, otherwise not needed.
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`.
pcre | libpcre3-dev | pcre-devel | yes | PCRE 1 (8.x) - for utf-8/unicode regular expression matching. Could be replaced by something else in the future. See issues/1731 for more information.
perl(Term::ReadLine) |  |  | no | Perl library needed by cyradm.
libsrs2 | no package | no package | no | It is used for implementing Sender Rewriting Scheme (SRS) functionality for messages forwarded by sieve scripts. Without it, messages forwarded by sieve scripts will not have this functionality and might have difficulty delivering to SMTP servers that insist on it.

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, or if you are using jmap.

### 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, CardDAV, WebDAV, JMAP

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

#### 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.