Windows

Make sure you have the supported compiler (Microsoft Visual C++) installed. The required compiler version depends on the Firebird version series you're willing to build. Firebird 1.5 is officially built using MSVC 7.1, later versions are built using MSVC 8.0, although other options (solution files for MSVC 7.1 and 9.0) are available as well. Starting with Firebird 3.0, MSVC 10 is added to the list of supported compilers. Express editions of MSVC are also supported, although you won't be able to build the control panel applet in this case.

Besides the compiler, you will need the sed utility and, if you're going to have the complete installation package, the InnoSetup package.

The basic compilation steps are the following:

1. Download the source code from the repository.
2. Open the command line window.
3. Go to the /builds/win32 directory of the source code tree.
4. Run the following batch files in order:
make_icu.bat
make_boot.bat
make_all.bat

Once the build finishes, the resulting binaries are placed into the /output_win32 or /output_x64 (depending on your platform) directory of the source code tree.

More information can be found in the /doc/README.build.msvc.html document inside the source code tree.

POSIX

Before building Firebird it is necessary to create the "configure" script, if one is not included with your distrubution. The configure script is generated by running the "autogen.sh" script. Autogen.sh is a shell script located in the root directory of the Firebird build.

Autogen.sh depends on the GNU autotools to create "configure". Modern LINUX distributions will already have the GNU autotools installed, but if you are attempting to build on AIX, HP-UX, or Solaris, you may need to install the necessary GNU utilities.

Once the "configure" script is generated, it can be run repeatedly without re-running the autogen.sh script. This allows the user to retest with different configuration options.

After that, all you need to do is to run make possibly followed by make install in the case you need to immediately deploy the created package.

So the basic compilation steps are the following:

1. Download the source code from the repository.
2. Run ./autogen.sh
3. Run make
4. Run make install (optional)

More information can be found in the /doc/README.build.posix.html document inside the source code tree.