Source tarballs needed to build the SP are available from the Shibboleth download site; for the SP, get the following:

  • log4cpp
  • opensaml
  • shibboleth-sp
  • xerces-c

You also need to download xml-security-c (do not use version 1.3.x; it has a bug causing things to break when signed assertions are enabled).  You may also need to download and install libcurl, if a suitable version is not already installed on your  system.

The build notes on the Shibboleth wiki page are basically correct.  Remember to replace the example prefix (/opt/shibboleth-sp) with your intended  destination for each configure command; the default prefix is /usr/local.  Note that the xerces-c build system is slightly non-standard; remember to set the XERCESCROOT variable as noted, and cd down to its src/xercesc directory to run its runConfigure script.  Otherwise, things are pretty standard -- "./configure <options>", "make", "make install" for the listed packages.  For shibboleth itself, you must specify the correct Apache version (1.3, 2.0, or 2.2) via configure options; for example, for Apache 2.2, use --enable-apache-22 --with-apxs22=<path_to_apxs>.

Also see the Shibboleth install notes for Linux.