Building from source.
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## Building from source.

For operating systems where no binary is provided or if you want the latest development version, you will have to build it from source. The code should be compilable on any system with ISO C89 compilers. It's been tested on UnixWare, OpenServer, OS/X, Linux, Solaris, and a variety of processors and compilers.

You can grab a release from the GPSBabel download page, but if you're going to be doing any development, you'll find that working from the GPSBabel CVS tree is easier.

In most cases, the code is as simple to build as running:

`./configure && make`

Expat is strongly recommended for source builds as it is required for reading all the XML formats such as GPX. Fedora users may need to 'yum install expat-devel'. Ubuntu users may need to 'apt-get install expat libexpat-dev'.

libusb is recommended for OS/X and Linux if you want to use a USB Garmin. Fedora users may need to 'yum install expat-devel'. Ubuntu users may need to 'apt-get install libusb-dev'.

There are additional flags that can be passed to configure to customize your build of GPSBabel.

`./configure --help`

lists all the supported options, but of interest we have:

`--disable-shapefile` Excludes the shapefile support.

`--disable-pdb` Excludes the Palm database support and all formats that rely on it.

`--disable-csv` Excludes all support for our something-separated formats.

`--disable-filters` Excludes all filter support.

`--enable-efence` Activate debugging mode for gpsbabel-debug.

`--with-doc=``dir` Specifies that the doc should be created and installed in `dir`.

`--without-libusb` Disables use of libusb, even it's it's available.

`--with-zlib=(included)|system|no` By default, we use our own version of zlib. If you specify `system` the system zlib is used. A value of `no` (or --without-zlib) disables zlib.

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