The OpenLDAP project does not make binary distributions of its software available. The reason for this has a lot to do with the number of dependencies it has on other packages. Many Linux vendors include precompiled versions of OpenLDAP with their distributions. Still, we'll discuss how to compile the OpenLDAP source code distribution; you'll need to build OpenLDAP to stay up to date, and studying the build process gives you a chance to learn more about the LDAP protocol.
The latest version of OpenLDAP can be obtained from http://www.OpenLDAP.org/software/download/. There are two major incarnations of OpenLDAP. The older 1.2 releases are essentially enhancements or small bug fixes to the original University of Michigan code base and implement only LDAPv2. The OpenLDAP 2 branch is an LDAPv3-compliant implementation. There are several advantages of LDAPv3 over the previous version, such as:
The OpenLDAP 2 release is an LDAPv3 server. However, LDAPv2 clients are not going away anytime soon. Therefore, OpenLDAP 2 and the majority of other LDAP servers can support both LDAPv2 and v3 clients.[2]
|