---
title: Building
description: A console-based XMPP client for power users.
sidebar:
  order: 2
---

CProof is a console-based XMPP client written in C. It's built using the <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">GNU's NCurses</a>, <a href="https://strophe.im/libstrophe/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">libstrophe</a> and it's ultimately based on the <a href="https://profanity-im.github.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Profanity</a>.

CProof uses the _Autotools_ for its build system. The _Autotools_ consist of _Autoconf_ and _Automake_. This page doesn't go in any detail about the _Autotools_, but describes the commands needed to build CProof, and brief descriptions of the various stages. You will also need _autoconf-archive_.

You can either download the archive from the homepage or use git, a version control system, to get the latest code.

If you want to get the latest version from git you'll have to do:

```bash
git clone https://git.jabber.space/devs/profanity.git
```

After obtaining the source code, and extracting it, use the following commands to build and install

```bash
./bootstrap.sh
./configure
make
make install
```

The first step is only needed if you pulled from git

The final step requires root privileges.

Various dependencies are required to install CProof, the _./configure_ script will fail if the minimum dependencies cannot be found.

The latest code in _master_ is also kept up to date with development changes to libstrophe, so a manual build of this library may also be needed

## Dependencies

The package names below are from Ubuntu and may differ per distribution.

### Build dependencies

```plaintext
automake
autoconf
autoconf-archive
libtool
pkg-config
```

### Required dependencies

CProof is using <a href="https://github.com/strophe/libstrophe" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">libstrophe</a>.

CProof also requires development packages of:

```plaintext
ncurses
glib
libcurl
readline
sqlite3
```

### Optional dependencies

```plaintext
libnotify                # Desktop notification support
libxss                   # Desktop idle time autoaway support
libotr                   # OTR support
libgpgme                 # PGP support
libsignal-protocol-c     # OMEMO support
libgcrypt                # OMEMO support (>= 1.7)
gtk2 or gtk3             # Desktop tray icon support
python                   # Python plugin support
cmocka                   # To run tests
shared-mime-info         # Send files with the correct mime type
gdk-pixbuf2              # Scale the image for `/avatar set`
qrencode                 # Display OMEMO QR code
```

## Distribution details

To make it easier to install all the required packages in various distributions we collect copy pastes here. These are contributed to users and might be out of date. Feel free to create <a href="https://git.jabber.space/devs/jabber.space/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">pull request</a> to improve this section.

### Debian

```bash
apt-get install libcaca-dev libnotify-dev libgtk2.0-dev libotr5-dev libssl-dev libstrophe-dev pkg-config python3-dev libexpat1-dev libncursesw5-dev libglib2.0-dev libreadline-dev libgpgme11-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev uuid-dev libcmocka-dev libgcrypt20-dev libsignal-protocol-c-dev libxss-dev libsqlite3-dev autoconf-archive  autoconf libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-dev libqrencode-dev
```

### openSUSE

```bash
zypper in gcc make automake autoconf libtool glib2-devel gtk2-devel libcmocka-devel libcurl-devel libexpat-devel libgpgme-devel libstrophe-devel libnotify-devel libotr-devel libuuid-devel ncurses-devel python3-devel readline-devel autoconf-archive libsignal-protocol-c-devel libgcrypt-devel sqlite3-devel gdk-pixbuf-devel qrencode-devel
```

### Alpine Linux (Edge)

```bash
apk add build-base autoconf autoconf-archive automake libtool pkgconf libmesode-dev ncurses-dev glib-dev curl-dev readline-dev libnotify-dev libxscrnsaver libotr-dev gpgme-dev libsignal-protocol-c-dev libgcrypt-dev gtk+2.0-dev python3-dev cmocka-dev
```

Note that some of the packages for Alpine Linux are only available in the "testing" repository

### Arch Linux

```bash
pacman -S --needed autoconf autoconf-archive automake base-devel check cmake cmocka curl doxygen expat gcc git gpgme gtk2 libgcrypt libnotify libotr libtool libxss make openssl pkg-config python wget sqlite gdk-pixbuf2 qrencode
```

### Fedora

```bash
dnf install autoconf autoconf-archive automake expect-devel gcc git glib2-devel glibc-all-langpacks gtk2-devel libXScrnSaver-devel libcmocka-devel libcurl-devel expat-devel libgcrypt-devel gpgme-devel libmicrohttpd-devel libnotify-devel libotr-devel libsignal-protocol-c-devel libtool libuuid-devel make ncurses-devel python3 python3-devel readline-devel openssl-devel sqlite-devel gdk-pixbuf2-devel qrencode-devel libstrophe-devel
```

### Mac OS

```bash
brew install autoconf autoconf-archive automake libtool pkg-config glib gnutls gpgme libotr libstrophe openssl ossp-uuid readline terminal-notifier libsignal-protocol-c
```

Some required packages are "keg-only", which means they are not symlinked into /usr/local, therefore pkg-config will fail when detecting the libraries and the build will fail. In order to fix this we need to add these packages to the _PKG_CONFIG_PATH.1rem_

```plaintext
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/ncurses/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/expat/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/curl/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/libffi/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"
```

### OpenBSD

```bash
pkg_add cmake gmake cmocka libtool automake-1.16.2 pkgconf readline python-3.8.2 autoconf-2.69p2 autoconf-archive libstrophe curl gpgme glib2 gtk+2 libotr libassuan libgpg-error libgcrypt libsignal-protocol-c sqlite3
```

<br />

## Explanations

<br />

### Input files

configure.ac – Macro definitions to configure CProof for the target environment (autoconf)

Makefile.am – Template Makefile (automake)

These files are the inputs to generating the actual configure script and Makefile required to configure and compile CProof.

### Generating a configure script

To generate the configure script:

```bash
./bootstrap.sh
```

This phase only needs to be run when changes have been made to configure.ac, however it does no harm to run it on every build. This phase also generates other files needed to create a config.h header (variables used in the main code), and a Makefile (used for compilation).

Why not just write configure yourself, instead of writing configure.ac and generating one with bootstrap.sh? Take a look at the generated configure script and you'll see why, there's a lot of work involved in writing a configure script.

The bootstrap.sh file is very simple, it just runs autoreconf --install see autoreconf

### Configuring

Once the configure script has been generated, run it to configure CProof.

```bash
./configure
```

This will result in the following being generated, along with some other files:

```bash
src/config.h
Makefile
```

### Compiling

The following step will then compile CProof:

```bash
make
```

Once you have run ./bootstrap.sh and ./configure once, if all you are doing is making code changes, then you only need to run make to recompile your changes.

To perform a clean build (i.e. remove all compiled files and recompile)

```bash
make clean
make
```

### Tests

All tests (unit and functional) can be run with:

```bash
make check
```

Unit tests alone can be run with:

```bash
make check-unit
```

### Install

Once you have compiled CProof with make, the executable will be available in the current directory:

```bash
./profanity
```

To install this version on your system, i.e. to be able to run it from anywhere:

```bash
sudo make install
```

This step is not really necessary when doing development (i.e. you can always run the version just compiled in the project directory), unless you want to have your development version available to any users on your system.
