Downloading and compiling projects

[Ossama Khayaat <ossamak at nht dot com dot kw>]

Assalamou Alaikom,
I really need help in the following issues.
So far, I tried so many times to download the test
the source from the projects that we have like
katoob, libquran, akka.
I really feel i'm either stupid, or miss something!
As far as I know, when I download the source, I
will find the configure file so i can:

# ./configure
# make
# make install

Well, I find only configure.in and when I try to run
it, it says permissions denied. So, I suppose it's a
permissions problem and use:

# chmod +x configure.in

and try again, but the same. It doesn't work :(

I'm really upset at my self, that I'm couldn't
even successfully compile and use a single
project of the ones we have, or at least to test
the result of the Quran project I'm working on.

So, would any one please help me, and maybe others
trying like me, without mentioning that they tried
and failed. It would really be great if there is some
extensive information on this like how to compile from
CVS. Even a link on the web would do so, English or
Arabic doesn't matter.

thanking you,
Ossama Khayat