Solaris - Build Instructions

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Build Instructions

Building Zimbra on Solaris is relatively straight forward, once the patches have been applied. The main challenge is adapting the codebase to cope with the different behaviour of the OS and it's various supporting libraries and programs - these issues are taken care of by the patches. The main codebase is almost purely Java so needs very little modification, and most of the ThirdParty opensource components are well supported on Solaris. Adapting the ThirdParty build details has been improved in a trial and error basis and should be fairly complete in the latest patches. The packaging system is completely different as is the system startup script system (init/SMF), again the patches take care of all of these issues.

I have documented the build process in three logical stages.

Setting up the Build Environment - This sets up the Perforce environment necessary to synch the source code from Zimbra, alternatively downloads the latest snapshot of Solaris sourcecode and patches, and sets up necessary Blastwave components.
Building the ThirdParty components - The potentially painful process of building the multitude of ThirdParty opensource components. The main build script and Makefile is patched to hopefully provide a relatively painless build, but be prepared for some debugging and hacking.
Building the main Zimbra codebase - This is usually the easiest bit, as long as a known good source snapshot is used. Depending on the underlying build hardware, this can take quite a while to complete. At the end of it is a single tarball that contains the binary installer for the required Solaris platform.