If you've just fetched from CVS, you'll need to build the configure scripts. You'll need autoconf 2.57 and automake 1.7.6, earlier versions may complain. Do this: libtoolize aclocal autoconf autoheader automake -a autoheader Now you're at the point of the source distribution. In Brief -------- ./configure make sudo make install In Detail --------- ./configure You can select the JVM you want to compile against with the --with-jvmdir and --with-jvm flags to configure. For instance: ./configure --with-jvmdir=/usr/lib/j2sdk1.4.1_02 If you don't specify --with-jvmdir, configure will look in likely places for each of the JVMs in jvm.list until it finds one that's installed. The --with-jvm flag works like this: ./configure --with-jvm=IBM or ./configure --with-jvm=Blackdown The configure script will search through jvm.list for a JVM that matches the one you've specified that's installed. Matching is done by subwordlist, for instance, any of these will match the 1_3.Blackdown.classic.native_threads JVM: ./configure --with-jvm=Blackdown ./configure --with-jvm=1_3.Blackdown ./configure --with-jvm=Blackdown.classic ./configure --with-jvm=1_3.Blackdown.classic.native_threads You can choose where you want JVM-Bridge to end up with the --prefix flag. This must be a full path. Default is '/usr/lib/jvm-bridge'. For instance: ./configure --prefix=/opt/jvm-bridge ./configure --prefix=/usr/lib/jvm-bridge-server --with-jvm=server If for some reason you want debugging, you can pass in '--enable-debugging' to configure. There are different levels that output different amounts of debugging info, check the Debug.hpp file (3 is default if you don't specify a level, 0 if you don't use the flag at all). For instance: ./configure --enable-debugging=4 OK, now we're ready to make: make You probably want to install as root: sudo make install And you're done installing the 'Native' part of JVM-Bridge.