Compiling ejabberd 2.0 on Debian (Etch)

Etch has ejabberd 1.1 packaged but if you’re like me you’ll want to play with the new features in 2.0, in which case you’ll need to build from source. Etch’s packaged version of Erlang is apparently not up to date enough to support it (it compiles fine, but I couldn’t get TLS to work) so you’ll need to build a newer version of that as well. Luckly it’s all easy. This following is all from your home directory on a fresh install of Debian:

Stuff you need:

sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install libexpat1-dev zlib1g-dev libssl-dev
sudo apt-get install m4 libncurses5-dev

Erlang:

wget http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R12B-3.tar.gz
tar -xzf otp_src_R12B-3.tar.gz
cd otp_src_R12B-3
./configure
make
sudo make install

Ejabberd:

wget http://www.process-one.net/downloads/ejabberd/2.0.1/ejabberd-2.0.1_2.tar.gz
tar -xzf ejabberd-2.0.1_2.tar.gz
cd ejabberd-2.0.1/src
./configure
make
sudo make install

With that done just edit the config in /etc/ejabberd as required, generate or otherwise obtain an SSL certificate, and you’re ready to go.