# Asterisk Project : System Libraries

Added by malcolmd , edited by mdavenport on Sep 23, 2010

In addition to the C compiler, you'll also need a set of system libraries. These libraries are used by Asterisk and must be installed before you can compile Asterisk. On most operating systems, you'll need to install both the library and it's corresponding development package.

Development libraries

For most operating systems, the development packages will have -dev or -devel on the end of the name. For example, on a Red Hat Linux system, you'd want to install both the "openssl" and "openssl-devel" packages.

A list of libraries you'll need to install include:

- OpenSSL
- ncurses
- newt
- libxml2
- Kernel headers (for building DAHDI drivers)

We recommend you use the package management system of your operating system to install these libraries before compiling and installing libpri, DAHDI, and Asterisk.

Help Finding the Right Libraries

If you're installing Asterisk 1.6.1.0 or later, it comes with a shell script called install_prereq.sh in the contrib/scripts sub-directory. If you run install_prereq test, it will give you the exact commands to install the necessary system libraries on your operating system. If you run install_prereq install, it will attempt to download and install the prerequisites automatically.