system requirements

The build process requires some additional software to be installed on your system. If you want to build, using the code from the source distribution, you will need:

a c++ compiler
Naturally, a c++ compiler is required to build the c++ code. I haven't tested many, but gcc 3.4.3 is known to work
a make tool
The make tool is used in the build process by auto*-tools suite
pkg-config
The pkg-config tool is used to find library dependencies and provide configuration to the ones who depend on us.

If you intend to build the software as checked out from the source repository, you will also have to install

gnu autoconf
to build the configure script
gnu automake
to build the Makefiles
gnu libtool
to build the shared libraries.