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.