(This file was created from 
http://prosody.im/doc/installing_from_source on 2009-05-22)

===== Building =====
==== Dependencies ====
There are a couple of libraries which Prosody needs installed before 
you can build it. These are:

  * liblua5.1: Lua 5.1 library
  * libssl 0.9.8: OpenSSL
  * libidn11: GNU libidn library, version 1.1

Both of these can be installed on Debian/Ubuntu with the packages: 
liblua5.1-dev libidn11-dev libssl-dev

On other systems... good luck, but please let me know of the best way 
of getting the dependencies for your system and I can add it here.

==== configure ====
The first step of building is to run the configure script. This 
creates a file called 'config.unix' which is used by the next step to 
control aspects of the build process.

All options to configure can be seen by running ./configure --help. 
Sometimes you won't need to pass any parameters to configure, but on 
most systems you shall.

To make this a little easier, there are a few presets which configure 
accepts. You can load a preset using:

   ./configure --ostype=PRESET

Where PRESET can currently be one of: debian, macosx

==== make ====
Once you have run configure successfully, then you can simply run:

   make

Simple? :-)

If you do happen to have problems at this stage, it is most likely 
due to the build process not finding the dependencies. Ensure you 
have them installed, and in the standard library paths for your 
system.

For more help, just ask ;-)

==== install ====
At this stage you should be able to run Prosody simply with:

   ./prosody

There is no problem with this, it is actually the easiest way to do 
development, as it doesn't spread parts around your system, and you 
can keep multiple versions around in their own directories without 
conflict.

Should you wish to install it system-wide however, simply run:

   sudo make install

...it will install into /usr/local/ by default. To change this you 
can pass to the initial ./configure using the 'prefix' option, or 
edit config.unix directly. If the new path doesn't require root 
permission to write to, you also won't need (or want) to use 'sudo' 
in front of the 'make install'.

Have fun, and see you on Jabber!