Here is a script of commands that I ran to get xapian built with Kan-Ru's patch on Debian Lenny. There is less goofing around if you are running Sid. I keep a git mirror of the xapian svn, with the patch already applied. I have been running this version of xapian for a week or so with no obvious ill effects. I'm sure this can be tidied up; I more or less just hacked my way through the process.
Note that this installs some packages from unstable onto your system, which in some sense voids your warranty. But you can remove them afterwards. I have no idea why the foolishness with update-alternatives is required. git clone git://pivot.cs.unb.ca/git/xapian.git cd xapian git checkout -b kan-ru origin/kan-ru sudo apt-get install build-essential m4 perl python zlib1g-dev sudo apt-get install uuid-dev wget # versions in lenny are too old sudo apt-get -t unstable install autoconf automake libtool sudo update-alternatives --set aclocal /usr/bin/aclocal-1.11 sudo update-alternatives --set automake /usr/bin/automake-1.11 sh bootstrap --without-autotools ./configure --disable-documentation make sudo make install sudo ldconfig cd /usr/local/bin && sudo ln -s xapian-config-1.1 xapian-config cd $HOME/projects/notmuch make ldd ./notmuch | grep xapian # should say something like # libxapian-1.1.so.3 => /usr/local/lib/libxapian-1.1.so.3 (0x00007fe2a3dd1000)