Compiling UnrealIRCd4

UnrealIRCd4 is now built completely using autotools. The following explores a few difficulties with building UnrealIRCd4 after checking it out from the Mercurial repository.

• crypto++ provides cryptographic functionality such as SSL and password encryption.
• boost provides a portable set of utility functions and template classes.
• c-ares will provide asynchronous DNS lookups.

• autoconf-archive-2009.04.26 has reusable autoconf macros, some of whose names have changed since earlier versions.
• automake-1.11 supports AM_DEFAULT_SOURCE_EXT which makes module compilation easy.
• other autotools components such as autoconf and libtool make up the buildsystem.

Whenever you make a fresh clone of UnrealIRCd4, you need to bootstrap its compilation scripts. These involve the autoconf-generated ./configure script, the automake-generated Makefile.in, and the libtool scripts for managing libraries. This is all done for you automatically if you run the following command in the top source directory:

$ autoreconf -vfi

If you see output with the line

configure.ac:66: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_MSG_ERROR

when running the above command, you must install or upgrade your autoconf-archive package.

After autoreconf successfully completes, it is recommended that you decide upon a local prefix into which you will install unrealIRCd4. I normally just use ${HOME} for this purpose, but you may want to use ${HOME}/unrealircd4 or whatever helps you keep yourself organized. Once you have decided upon a prefix, run ./configure and pass it your prefix like in the following example:

$ ./configure –prefix=“${HOME}”

Compilation and installation may now be done with the simple make command (with parallel building, if you'd like):

$ make -j4 -l5 install

If you need any further help with compiling unrealIRCd4, I'd be happy to see you in #unreal4-devel.