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<h1><a name="installation">libvirt Installation</a></h1>
<ul id="toc"></ul>
<h2><a name="compiling">Compiling a release tarball</a></h2>
<p>
libvirt uses the standard configure/make/install steps:
</p>
<pre>
$ gunzip -c libvirt-x.x.x.tar.gz | tar xvf -
$ cd libvirt-x.x.x
$ ./configure</pre>
<p>
The <i>configure</i> script can be given options to change its default
behaviour.
</p>
<p>
To get the complete list of the options it can take, pass it the
<i>--help</i> option like this:
</p>
<pre>
$ ./configure <i>--help</i></pre>
<p>
When you have determined which options you want to use (if any),
continue the process.
</p>
<p>
Note the use of <b>sudo</b> with the <i>make install</i> command
below. Using sudo is only required when installing to a location your
user does not have write access to. Installing to a system location
is a good example of this.
</p>
<p>
If you are installing to a location that your user <i>does</i> have write
access to, then you can instead run the <i>make install</i> command
without putting <b>sudo</b> before it.
</p>
<pre>
$ ./configure <i>[possible options]</i>
$ make
$ <b>sudo</b> <i>make install</i></pre>
<p>
At this point you <b>may</b> have to run ldconfig or a similar utility
to update your list of installed shared libs.
</p>
<h2><a name="building">Building from a GIT checkout</a></h2>
<p>
The libvirt build process uses GNU autotools, so after obtaining a
checkout it is necessary to generate the configure script and Makefile.in
templates using the <code>autogen.sh</code> command, passing the extra
arguments as for configure. As an example, to do a complete build and
install it into your home directory run:
</p>
<pre>
$ ./autogen.sh --prefix=$HOME/usr --enable-compile-warnings=error
$ make
$ <b>sudo</b> make install</pre>
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