The latest versions of the libvirt C library can be downloaded from:
Once an hour, an automated snapshot is made from the git server source tree. These snapshots should be usable, but we make no guarantees about their stability:
Libvirt code source is now maintained in a git repository available on libvirt.org:
git clone git://libvirt.org/libvirt.git
It can also be browsed at:
http://libvirt.org/git/?p=libvirt.git;a=summary
This is both a guide to developing with libvirt, and a useful reference document. It is a work in progress, contributed to by the members of the libvirt team and being authored by a professional author.
Contributors to this are VERY welcome, so if you'd like to get your name in this and demonstrate your virtualisation prowess, contributing solidly to the content here will do it. :)
PDF download is available here:
The source is also in a git repository:
git clone git://libvirt.org/libvirt-appdev-guide.git
Browsable at:
http://libvirt.org/git/?p=libvirt-appdev-guide.git;a=summary
libvirt uses the standard configure/make/install steps:
gunzip -c libvirt-xxx.tar.gz | tar xvf -
cd libvirt-xxxx
./configure --help
To see the options, then the compilation/installation proper:
./configure [possible options]
make
make install
At that point you may have to rerun ldconfig or a similar utility to update your list of installed shared libs.
The libvirt build process uses GNU autotools, so after obtaining a
checkout it is necessary to generate the configure script and Makefile.in
templates using the autogen.sh command, passing the extra
arguments as for configure. As an example, to do a complete build and
install it into your home directory run:
./autogen.sh --prefix=$HOME/usr --enable-compile-warnings=error
make
make install