With some Open Source software, installing from source historically involved time-consuming modifications to the make files and configuration files along with some knowledge of the process of compiling.
SpamAssassin is written in the Perl language. There are various ways of packaging Perl that make it easy to install. Unless the system configuration is unusual, installing SpamAssassin is relatively uncomplicated. To install SpamAssassin, enter the CPAN shell by typing:
# perl -MCPAN -e shell
If the CPAN module is correctly configured, the following output (or something similar) will appear:
cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v1.7601) ReadLine support enabled
Now, at the cpan
prompt, enter the following command:
cpan> install Mail::SpamAssassin
The CPAN module will query an online database to find the latest version of SpamAssassin and its dependencies, and then install them. Dependencies will be installed before SpamAssassin.
The sample output is shown below...