calibre supports installation from source, only on Linux. 

Note that you *do not* need to install from source to hack on
the calibre source code. To get started with calibre development,
use a normal calibre install and follow the instructions at
http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/develop.html

On Linux, there are two kinds of installation from source possible.
Note that both kinds require lots of dependencies as well as a
full development environment (compilers, headers files, etc.) 

All installation related functions are accessed by the command::

    python setup.py

Install
==========

The first type of install will actually "install" calibre to
your computer by putting its files into the system in the following locations:

  - Binaries (actually python wrapper scripts) in <prefix>/bin
  - Python and C modules in <prefix>/lib/calibre
  - Resources like icons, etc. in <prefix>/share/calibre

This type of install can be run by the command::

    sudo python setup.py install

<prefix> is normally the installation prefix of python, usually /usr.
It can be controlled by the --prefix option. See
  
   python setup.py install -h 

for details.

Develop
=============

This type of install is designed to let you run calibre from your home directory,
making it easy to hack on it.
It will only install binaries into /usr/bin, but all the actual code and resource
files will be read from the calibre source tree in your home directory
(or wherever you choose to put it).

This type of install can be run with the command::

    sudo python setup.py develop

Use the -h flag for help on the develop command.