#summary Using the Source, Luke
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Before you build from source, consider why? If you have a perfectly good package of a recent version, you're better off using that.
You'll likely need to install the development package for libevent
* *Ubuntu:* {{{apt-get install libevent-dev}}}
* *Redhat/Fedora:* {{{yum install libevent-devel}}}
If your compiling from source you likely want to specify a destination directory as well, replace with whatever you fancy.
If you wish to build with SASL support, ensure the cyrus-sasl libraries are built and run `./configure --enable-sasl`. See the [SASLHowto] for more information.
If you're deploying memcached to more than one server, you probably really want to package it. That way you may have cleaner updates, easy uninstalls, easy re-installs, future installs, etc. `make install` is for developers and chumps.
The memcached source tarball has contained a workable .spec file. To use it, create a build directory for RPM and compile memcached using the commands below. *Do not* run this as root, as tests will not pass.
You will need gcc and libevent-devel installed. (`yum install gcc libevent libevent-devel`)
Then install the RPM via a standard `rpm -Uvh memcached-etc.rpm`
TODO: this section
Note that many clients depend on libmemcached. They either include it in their sources, or require an external build. You can follow the above practices for fetching and installing libmemcached as well.
If you're building from source, especially remember that most major languages have distribution systems which make installation easy.