Windows

Make sure you have the supported compiler (Microsoft Visual C++) installed. The required compiler version depends on the Firebird version you're willing to build:

• Firebird 4.x is officially built using MSVC 2017
• Firebird 3.x is officially built using MSVC 2010
• Firebird 2.x is officially built using MSVC 8.0

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

The 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
   make_examples.bat (optionally)

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.

Read here for more information, it's also mirrored 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)

Read here for more information, it's also mirrored in the /doc/README.build.posix.html document inside the source code tree.