PolarSSL supports a number of different build environments.

UNIX or Cygwin/MinGW Make

In a regular UNIX environment, or Cygwin/MinGW environment you can simply build by running:

    make

To run the test suite, run:

    make check

UNIX or Cygwin/MinGW CMake

If you have CMake, the build process is better able to handle all the dependencies and do minimal builds. To build the source using CMake, run:

    cmake .
    make

To run the test suite, run:

    make tests

In addition the CMake build system supports different build modes, to allow the stripping of debug information, or to add coverage information to the binaries. The following modes are supported:

• Release
  This generates the default code without any unnecessary information in the binary files.
• Debug
  This generates debug information and disables optimization of the code.
• Coverage
  This generates code coverage information in addition to debug information.

Switching build modes in CMake is simple. For debug mode, enter at the command line:

    cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:String="Debug" .

Windows Visual C++

With Visual C++: open "visualc/polarssl.dsw" and select Rebuild all

If you're looking for how to create a small CA with OpenSSL, please have a look at the OpenSSL Simple-CA HOWTO.