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.

Note

Cyrus does not support compiling with Link Time Optimization, but some platforms now enable Link Time Optimization by default. If your platform does so, you will need to override it, perhaps by adding -fno-lto to CFLAGS and LDFLAGS.

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 libpcre2-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.

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.
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, also known as the authentication mechanism GSSAPI. Configure option: `--with-gss_impl=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.
xxd	xxd	vim-common	yes	Needed for the _js.h files, for CalDAV and CardDAV support.
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.
CLD2	libcld2-dev	cld2-devel	yes/no	Compact Language Detector 2 (probabilistically detects over 80 languages in Unicode UTF-8 text, either plain text or HTML/XML). Required for Xapian (`--enable-xapian`), 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`.
pcre2	libpcre2-dev	pcre2-devel	yes	PCRE 2 (10.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.

Cyrus IMAP