MIT Kerberos Documentation

Doing the build

Using autoconf

(If you are not a developer, you can skip this section.)

In the Kerberos V5 source directory, there is a configure script which automatically determines the compilation environment and creates the proper Makefiles for a particular platform. This configure script is generated using autoconf, which you should already have installed.

Normal users will not need to worry about running autoconf; the distribution comes with the configure script already prebuilt.

One tool which is provided for the convenience of developers can be found in src/util/reconf. This program should be run while the current directory is the top source directory. It will automatically rebuild the configure script if it needs rebuilding. If you know that you have made a change that will require that the configure file be rebuilt from scratch, specify the --force option:

cd /u1/krb5-VERSION/src
./util/reconf --force

Then follow the instructions for building packaged source trees (below). To install the binaries into a binary tree, do:

cd /u1/krb5-VERSION/src
make all
make install DESTDIR=somewhere-else

You have a number of different options in how to build Kerberos.

Building within a single tree

If you only need to build Kerberos for one platform, using a single directory tree which contains both the source files and the object files is the simplest. However, if you need to maintain Kerberos for a large number of platforms, you will probably want to use separate build trees for each platform. We recommend that you look at OS Incompatibilities, for notes that we have on particular operating systems.

If you don’t want separate build trees for each architecture, then use the following abbreviated procedure:

cd /u1/krb5-VERSION/src
./configure
make

That’s it!

Building with separate build directories

If you wish to keep separate build directories for each platform, you can do so using the following procedure. (Note, this requires that your make program support VPATH. GNU’s make will provide this functionality, for example.) If your make program does not support this, see the next section.

For example, if you wish to store the binaries in tmpbuild build directory you might use the following procedure:

mkdir /u1/tmpbuild
cd /u1/tmpbuild
/u1/krb5-VERSION/src/configure
make

Building using lndir

If you wish to keep separate build directories for each platform, and you do not have access to a make program which supports VPATH, all is not lost. You can use the lndir program to create symbolic link trees in your build directory.

For example, if you wish to create a build directory for solaris binaries you might use the following procedure:

mkdir /u1/krb5-VERSION/solaris
cd /u1/krb5-VERSION/solaris
/u1/krb5-VERSION/src/util/lndir `pwd`/../src
./configure
make

You must give an absolute pathname to lndir because it has a bug that makes it fail for relative pathnames. Note that this version differs from the latest version as distributed and installed by the XConsortium with X11R6. Either version should be acceptable.

Installing the binaries

Once you have built Kerberos, you should install the binaries. You can do this by running:

make install

If you want to install the binaries into a destination directory that is not their final destination, which may be convenient if you want to build a binary distribution to be deployed on multiple hosts, you may use:

make install DESTDIR=/path/to/destdir

This will install the binaries under DESTDIR/PREFIX, e.g., the user programs will install into DESTDIR/PREFIX/bin, the libraries into DESTDIR/PREFIX/lib, etc.

Some implementations of make allow multiple commands to be run in parallel, for faster builds. We test our Makefiles in parallel builds with GNU make only; they may not be compatible with other parallel build implementations.

Testing the build

The Kerberos V5 distribution comes with built-in regression tests. To run them, simply type the following command while in the top-level build directory (i.e., the directory where you sent typed make to start building Kerberos; see Building within a single tree):

make check

However, there are several prerequisites that must be satisfied first:

  • Configure and build Kerberos with Tcl support. Tcl is used to drive the test suite. This often means passing --with-tcl to configure to tell it the location of the Tcl configuration script. (See Options to configure.)
  • In addition to Tcl, DejaGnu must be available on the system for some of the tests to run. The test suite will still run the other tests if DejaGnu is not present, but the test coverage will be reduced accordingly.
  • On some operating systems, you have to run make install before running make check, or the test suite will pick up installed versions of Kerberos libraries rather than the newly built ones. You can install into a prefix that isn’t in the system library search path, though. Alternatively, you can configure with --disable-rpath, which renders the build tree less suitable for installation, but allows testing without interference from previously installed libraries.
  • In order to test the RPC layer, the local system has to be running the portmap daemon and it has to be listening to the regular network interface (not just localhost).

There are additional regression tests available, which are not run by make check. These tests require manual setup and teardown of support infrastructure which is not easily automated, or require excessive resources for ordinary use. The procedure for running the manual tests is documented at http://k5wiki.kerberos.org/wiki/Manual_Testing.

Cleaning up the build

  • Use make clean to remove all files generated by running make command.
  • Use make distclean to remove all files generated by running ./configure script. After running make distclean your source tree (ideally) should look like the raw (just un-tarred) source tree with executed util/reconf command.