We provide Debian GNU/Linux (i386 and amd64), Ubuntu (i386 and amd64) and CentOS (amd64 only) packages for YAZ. You should be able to create packages for other CPUs by building them from the source package.
YAZ is also part of several packages repositories. Some of them are
Solaris CSW: http://www.opencsw.org/packages/yaz/
Solaris: http://unixpackages.com
FreeBSD: http://www.freshports.org/net/yaz
NetBSD: http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/net/yaz/README.html
You can choose to compile YAZ from official tar releases from http://ftp.indexdata.com/pub/yaz/ or clone it via Github https://github.com/indexdata/yaz.git.
If you wish to use character set conversion facilities in YAZ or if you are compiling YAZ for use with Zebra, it is a good idea to ensure that the iconv library is installed. Some Unixes today already have it - if not, we suggest GNU libiconv.
YAZ 3.0.16 and later includes a wrapper for the ICU (International Components for Unicode). In order to use this, the developer version of the ICU library must be available. ICU support is recommended for applications such as Pazpar2 and Zebra.
The libxslt, libxml2 librararies are required if YAZ is to support SRU/Solr. These libraries are very portable and should compile out-of-the box on virtually all Unix platforms. It is available in binary forms for Linux and others.
The GNU tools Autoconf, Automake and Libtool are used to generate Makefiles and configure YAZ for the system. You do not need these tools unless you're using the Git version of YAZ.
The CQL parser for YAZ is built using GNU Bison. This tool is only needed if you're using the Git version of YAZ.
YAZ includes a tiny ASN.1 compiler. This compiler is written in Tcl. But as for Bison you do not need it unless you're using Git version of YAZ or you're using the compiler to build your own codecs for private ASN.1.
If you are checking out from Git, run:
      ./buildconf.sh
     
     This will create the configure script and Makefiles.
    
The next step is always:
     ./configure
    
     The configure script attempts to use use the C compiler specified by
     the CC environment variable. If not set, GNU C will be
     used if it is available. The CFLAGS environment
     variable holds options to be passed to the C compiler. If you're using
     Bourne-compatible shell, you may pass something like this to use a
     particular C compiler with optimization enabled:
    
     CC=/opt/ccs/bin/cc CFLAGS=-O ./configure
    To customize YAZ, the configure script also accepts a set of options. The most important are:
--prefix=prefix
       Specifies installation prefix for YAZ. This is
	only needed if you run make install later to
	perform a "system" installation. The prefix is
	/usr/local if not specified.
	
--enable-tcpd
       The front end server will be built using Wietse's TCP wrapper library. It allows you to allow/deny clients depending on IP number. The TCP wrapper library is often used in GNU/Linux and BSD distributions. See hosts_access(5) and tcpd(8).
--enable-threads
       YAZ will be built using POSIX threads.
	Specifically, _REENTRANT will be defined during
	compilation.
        
--disable-shared
       The make process will not create shared
	libraries (also known as shared objects .so).
	By default, shared libraries are created -
	equivalent to --enable-shared.
       
--disable-shared
       The make process will not create
	static libraries (.a).
	By default, static libraries are created -
	equivalent to --enable-static.
	
--with-iconv[=prefix]
       Compile YAZ with iconv library in directory
	prefix. By default configure will
	search for iconv on the system. Use this option if it
	doesn't find iconv. Alternatively,
	--without-iconv, can be used to force YAZ
	not to use iconv.
	
--with-xslt[=prefix]
       Compile YAZ with
	libxslt in directory
	prefix.
	Use this option if you want XSLT and XML support.
	By default, configure will
	search for libxslt on the system. Use this option if
	libxslt is not found automatically. Alternatively,
	--without-xslt, can be used to force YAZ
	not to use libxslt.
        
--with-xml2[=prefix]
       Compile YAZ with
	libxml2 in directory
	prefix.
	Use this option if you want YAZ to use XML and support SRU/Solr.
	By default, configure will
	search for libxml2 on the system. Use this option if
	libxml2 is not found automatically. Alternatively,
	--without-xml2, can be used to force YAZ
	not to use libxml2.
	
	 Note that option --with-xslt
	 also enables libxml2.
	
--with-gnutls[=prefix]
       YAZ will be linked with the GNU TLS libraries and an SSL COMSTACK will be provided. By default configure enables SSL support for YAZ if the GNU TLS development libraries are found on the system.
--with-icu[=prefix]
       YAZ will be linked the ICU library in the prefix if given. If prefix is not given, the libraries exposed by the script icu-config will be used if found.
--with-memcached
       YAZ will be linked with libMemcached to allow for result-set caching for ZOOM. The prefix can not be given. Note that 0.40 of libmemcached is required.
--with-redis
       YAZ will be linked with the hiredis C library to allow for result-set caching for ZOOM on a redis server. The prefix can not be given.
When configured, build the software by typing:
      make
     
The following files are generated by the make process:
src/libyaz.la
	Main YAZ library. This is no ordinary library. It's
	a Libtool archive.
	By default, YAZ creates a static library in
	lib/.libs/libyaz.a.
       
src/libyaz_server.laGeneric Frontend server. This is an add-on for libyaz.la. Code in this library uses POSIX threads functions - if POSIX threads are available on the platform.
src/libyaz_icu.laFunctions that wrap the ICU library.
ztest/yaz-ztestTest Z39.50 server.
client/yaz-clientZ39.50 client for testing the protocol. See chapter YAZ client for more information.
util/yaz-configA Bourne-shell script, generated by configure, that specifies how external applications should compile - and link with YAZ.
util/yaz-asncompThe ASN.1 compiler for YAZ. Requires the
       Tcl Shell, tclsh, in
       PATH to operate.
       
util/yaz-iconvThis program converts data in one character set to another. This command exercises the YAZ character set conversion API.
util/yaz-marcdumpThis program parses ISO2709 encoded MARC records and prints them in line-format or XML.
util/yaz-icuThis program exposes the ICU wrapper library if that is enabled for YAZ. Only if ICU is available this program is useful.
util/yaz-urlThis program is a simple HTTP page fetcher ala wget or curl.
zoom/zoomshA simple shell implemented on top of the ZOOM functions. The shell is a command line application that allows you to enter simple commands to perform ZOOM operations.
zoom/zoomtst1,
       zoom/zoomtst2, ..Several small applications that demonstrate the ZOOM API.
     If you wish to install YAZ in system directories
     /usr/local/bin,
     /usr/local/lib .. etc, you can type:
    
     make install
    
     You probably need to have root access in order to perform this.
     You must specify the --prefix option for configure if
     you wish to install YAZ in other directories than the default
     /usr/local/.
    
If you wish to perform an un-installation of YAZ, use:
     make uninstall
    
     This will only work if you haven't reconfigured YAZ (and therefore
     changed installation prefix). Note that uninstall will not
     remove directories created by make install, e.g.
     /usr/local/include/yaz.
    
     This section describes how to compile - and link your own
     applications using the YAZ toolkit.
     If you're used to Makefiles this shouldn't be hard. As for
     other libraries you have used before, you need to set a proper include
     path for your C/C++ compiler and specify the location of
     YAZ libraries. You can do it by hand, but generally we suggest
     you use the yaz-config that is generated
     by configure. This is especially
     important if you're using the threaded version of YAZ which
     require you to pass more options to your linker/compiler.
    
     The yaz-config script accepts command line
     options that makes the yaz-config script print
     options that you should use in your make process.
     The most important ones are:
     --cflags, --libs
     which prints C compiler flags, and linker flags respectively.
    
     A small and complete Makefile for a C
     application consisting of one source file,
     myprog.c, may look like this:
     
      YAZCONFIG=/usr/local/bin/yaz-config
      CFLAGS=`$(YAZCONFIG) --cflags`
      LIBS=`$(YAZCONFIG) --libs`
      myprog: myprog.o
         $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -o myprog myprog.o $(LIBS)
      
     The CFLAGS variable consists of a C compiler directive that will set
     the include path to the parent directory
     of yaz. That is, if YAZ header files were
     installed in /usr/local/include/yaz,
     then include path is set to /usr/local/include.
     Therefore, in your applications you should use
     
      #include <yaz/proto.h>
     and not
      #include <proto.h>
     
     For Libtool users, the yaz-config script provides
     a different variant of option --libs, called
     --lalibs that returns the name of the
     Libtool archive(s) for YAZ rather than the ordinary ones.
    
     For applications using the threaded version of YAZ,
     specify threads after the
     other options. When threads is given,
     more flags and linker flags will be printed by
     yaz-config. If our previous example was
      using threads, you'd have to modify the lines that set
     CFLAGS and LIBS as
     follows:
     
      CFLAGS=`$(YAZCONFIG) --cflags threads`
      LIBS=`$(YAZCONFIG) --libs threads`
     
     There is no need specify POSIX thread libraries in your Makefile.
     The LIBS variable includes that as well.