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In a recent post, I explained how to install the Thrift RPC framework on OS X 10.5. Another scenario that doesn’t install as advertised out of the box is building Thrift on Ubuntu server. Again, an issue with pkg.m4 is to blame – follow the steps below to get Thrift built on your Ubuntu system:

As in the previous guide start by getting the latest revision of the Thrift library, and extract the archive.

Install the necessary prerequisites, which is much easier than on OS X thanks to apt. Fire up a terminal, and use apt-get to pull everything. Substitute java5 with your favorite jdk, if you’re not a fan of the Sun implementation.

apt-get install libboost-dev libevent-dev build-essential
python-dev automake pkg-config libtool flex bison sun-java5-jdk

Now, for the pkg.m4 workaround!

cd [thrift root]
cp /usr/share/aclocal/pkg.m4 aclocal/

At this point, all that remains is to build Thrift. (If you want Ruby support, add ruby-dev to the apt-get list above, and get rid of the ruby flag below.)

./bootstrap.sh
./configure --with-ruby=no
make
sudo make install

Enjoy!