To build Privoxy from source, autoconf, GNU make (gmake), and, of course, a C compiler like gcc are required. When building from a source tarball, first unpack the source: tar xzvf privoxy-&p-version;-src.tar.gz cd privoxy-&p-version; To build the development version, you can get the source code by doing: cd <root-dir> git clone https://www.privoxy.org/git/privoxy.git This will create a directory named <root-dir>/privoxy/, which will contain the source tree. Note that source code in Git is development quality, and may not be stable or well tested. It is strongly recommended to not run Privoxy as root. You should configure/install/run Privoxy as an unprivileged user, preferably by creating a privoxy user and group just for this purpose. See your local documentation for the correct command line to do add new users and groups (something like adduser, but the command syntax may vary from platform to platform). /etc/passwd might then look like: privoxy:*:7777:7777:privoxy proxy:/no/home:/no/shell And then /etc/group, like: privoxy:*:7777: Some binary packages may do this for you. Then, to build from either unpacked tarball or Git checkout: autoheader autoconf ./configure # (--help to see options) make # (the make from GNU, sometimes called gmake) su # Possibly required make -n install # (to see where all the files will go) make -s install # (to really install, -s to silence output) Using GNU make, you can have the first four steps automatically done for you by just typing: make in the freshly downloaded or unpacked source directory. To build an executable with security enhanced features so that users cannot easily bypass the proxy (e.g. Go There Anyway), or alter their own configurations, configure like this: ./configure --disable-toggle --disable-editor --disable-force Note that all of these options can also be disabled through the configuration file. WARNING: If installing as root, the install will fail unless a non-root user or group is specified, or a privoxy user and group already exist on the system. If a non-root user is specified, and no group, then the installation will try to also use a group of the same name as user. If a group is specified (and no user), then the support files will be installed as writable by that group, and owned by the user running the installation. configure accepts --with-user and --with-group options for setting user and group ownership of the configuration files (which need to be writable by the daemon). The specified user must already exist. When starting Privoxy, it must be run as this same user to insure write access to configuration and log files! Alternately, you can specify user and group on the make command line, but be sure both already exist: make -s install USER=privoxy GROUP=privoxy The default installation path for make install is /usr/local. This may of course be customized with the various ./configure path options. If you are doing an install to anywhere besides /usr/local, be sure to set the appropriate paths with the correct configure options (./configure --help). Non-privileged users must of course have write access permissions to wherever the target installation is going. If you do install to /usr/local, the install will use sysconfdir=$prefix/etc/privoxy by default. All other destinations, and the direct usage of --sysconfdir flag behave like normal, i.e. will not add the extra privoxy directory. This is for a safer install, as there may already exist another program that uses a file with the config name, and thus makes /usr/local/etc cleaner. If installing to /usr/local, the documentation will go by default to $prefix/share/doc. But if this directory doesn't exist, it will then try $prefix/doc and install there before creating a new $prefix/share/doc just for Privoxy. Again, if the installs goes to /usr/local, the localstatedir (ie: var/) will default to /var instead of $prefix/var so the logs will go to /var/log/privoxy/, and the pid file will be created in /var/run/privoxy.pid. make install will attempt to set the correct values in config (main configuration file). You should check this to make sure all values are correct. If appropriate, an init script will be installed, but it is up to the user to determine how and where to start Privoxy. The init script should be checked for correct paths and values, if anything other than a default install is done. If install finds previous versions of local configuration files, most of these will not be overwritten, and the new ones will be installed with a new extension. default.action and default.filter will be overwritten. You will then need to manually update the other installed configuration files as needed. The default template files will be overwritten. If you have customized, local templates, these should be stored safely in a separate directory and defined in config by the templdir directive. It is of course wise to always back-up any important configuration files just in case. If a previous version of Privoxy is already running, you will have to restart it manually. For more detailed instructions on how to build Redhat RPMs, Windows self-extracting installers, building on platforms with special requirements etc, please consult the developer manual. The simplest command line to start Privoxy is $path/privoxy --user=privoxy $path/etc/privoxy/config. See privoxy --usage, or the man page, for other options, and configuration. ]]>