Thank you for your note. Well, I downloaded Asterisk 1.6.0-beta9, uncompressed it and now I have this folder in my Downloads folder. In there I found a README file which reads:
1) Read this README file.
There are more documents than this one in the doc/ directory. You may also
want to check the configuration files that contain examples and reference
guides. They are all in the configs/ directory.
2) Run "./configure"
Execute the configure script to guess values for system-dependent
variables used during compilation.
3) Run "make menuselect" [optional]
This is needed if you want to select the modules that will be compiled and to
check dependencies for various optional modules.
4) Run "make"
Assuming the build completes successfully:
5) Run "make install"
If this is your first time working with Asterisk, you may wish to install
the sample PBX, with demonstration extensions, etc. If so, run:
6) "make samples"
Doing so will overwrite any existing configuration files you have installed.
Finally, you can launch Asterisk in the foreground mode (not a daemon) with:
# asterisk -vvvc
You'll see a bunch of verbose messages fly by your screen as Asterisk
initializes (that's the "very very verbose" mode). When it's ready, if
you specified the "c" then you'll get a command line console, that looks
like this:
*CLI>
You can type "help" at any time to get help with the system. For help
with a specific command, type "help <command>". To start the PBX using
your sound card, you can type "console dial" to dial the PBX. Then you can use
"console answer", "console hangup", and "console dial" to simulate the actions
of a telephone. Remember that if you don't have a full duplex sound card
(and Asterisk will tell you somewhere in its verbose messages if you do/don't)
then it won't work right (not yet).
"man asterisk" at the Unix/Linux command prompt will give you detailed
information on how to start and stop Asterisk, as well as all the command
line options for starting Asterisk.
Feel free to look over the configuration files in /etc/asterisk, where you
will find a lot of information about what you can do with Asterisk.
I ran ./configure in Terminal and I get this in return:
MBP:~ HK$ cd /Users/HK/Downloads/asterisk-1.6.0-beta9
MBP:asterisk-1.6.0-beta9 HK$ ./configure
checking build system type... i386-apple-darwin9.4.0
checking host system type... i386-apple-darwin9.4.0
checking for gcc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cl.exe... no
configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
See `config.log' for more details.
I have X11 and Fink installed (thinking that's the C compiler the program would need) but it doesn't help.
I found this computer about C compiler:
http://developer.apple.com/tools/gcc_overview.html