Build Samba from Source

Step 1: Download Samba

Currently, there are three methods to download the current Samba sources, either as a tarball of the latest stable release, or a development version via git or rsync. If you hope to work with the team on a development version to resolve issues you may hit via code changes, we recommend using the git method for downloading Samba, as it makes getting updates easier, and also allows you to integrate test patches from Samba developers more easily in case of problems.

In the following examples we will assume that your top-level source is named samba-master. If you downloaded a tarball this will instead be based on the name of the tarball downloaded (e.g. samba-4.0.0 for the tarball samba-4.0.0.tar.gz). Also note that in the master branch the Samba 4 code in our current git tree is now located in the top level directory.

Downloading a tarball

If you wish to use a released version of Samba 4.0, you can download the latest Samba 4.0 tarball from the Samba website

Downloading via git

Git allows you to download the source tree via either the git or httpprotocols. In general, the git protocol is the preferred choice since it compresses the data being transferred. To download the source tree via git, run the following command:

$ git clone git://git.samba.org/samba.git samba-master

Alternatively, if you prefer to use the http protocol, run the following command:

$ git clone http://gitweb.samba.org/samba.git samba-master

Either command will create a directory called samba-master in the current directory.

Updating via git

If you already have downloaded the source tree via git and want to update the tree to the latest version, run the following command in your samba-master directory:

$ git pull

If you get an error like this:

fatal: Unable to create '[...]/samba_master/.git/index.lock': File exists.

Run the command below to reset your tree.

If you are having trouble compiling the source, it may be due to stale files. You can reset your git tree to correct these errors. To reset your git tree, run the following command in your samba-master directory:

$ git clean -x -f -d

Downloading via rsync

If git is not available to you, rsync is the next best choice. To download the source tree via rsync, run the following command:

$ rsync -avz samba.org::ftp/unpacked/samba_4_0_test/ samba-master

This command will create a directory called samba-master in the current directory, containing a checked out git repository. If you plan on using git to manage the tree, you will need to run the following commands in your samba-master directory:

$ cd samba-master/
$ rm .git/refs/tags/*
$ rm -r .git/refs/remotes/
$ git config remote.origin.url git://git.samba.org/samba.git
$ git config --add remote.origin.fetch +refs/tags/*:refs/tags/* (this line is optional)
$ git fetch

Note you can ignore this error from git fetch:

error: refs/heads/master does not point to a valid object!

Refer to the Updating via git instructions on how to manage the source tree with git.