The easiest way to get and use Sinan is to download the precompiled version from [the github sinan site] (https://github.com/downloads/erlware/sinan/sinan)
To build Sinan, start with the Makefile in the root of the Sinan project. Unfortunately, Sinan can not actually build itself directly due to the lack of sandboxing support in the Erlang code loading subsystem. The purpose of the Makefile based bootstraping in the Sinan project is to get around that limitation.
To get started building Sinan from source we need to have a few dependencies in place.
The versions of these OTP Applications that are required are detailed in the sinan.config located in the top level of the sinan project. If no version is specified there then any version will do quite well.
Make sure you are in the root of the system. Then run the following command:
$> make build
Assuming everything built correctly you are ready to move on to the next step.
You may, at your discression, run sinan's test suite. There are four different kinds of tests in Sinan and all four sets of tests must pass for for the built version of Sinan to be considered stable. To run these tests enter the following commands on the command line.
$> make eunit
$> make cucumber
$> make proper
$> make smoketests
The smoke tests have a lot of output. Its actually easier to see failures if you pipe standard out into /dev/null and then look for errors from standard error as follows:
$> make smoketests > /dev/null
With this command all errors in the smoketest should be immediately obvious.
Assuming all of these tests pass you are ready to move on to packaging.
As with everything else you can package sinan simply by running the following command:
$> make escript
This will run Sinan's escript task on Sinan itself producing a 'sinan' escript. The location of the escript will be printed as the last line of output after you run the command.
Checkout the sinan wiki for more information about sinan and how to get started with it. Also checkout the Building From Source document for expanded coverage of building sinan.