recently I needed to add an imap extension to php, which uses the c-client library. normally this means recompiling php with --with-imap and --with-imap-ssl flags set, a major headache, but on ubuntu makes it easy.

karl@db1:~$ apt-cache search c-client
...
libc-client2007 - UW c-client library for mail protocols
libc-client2007-dev - UW c-client library for mail protocols (development)
...

karl@db1:~$ sudo apt-get install libc-client2007 libc-client2007-dev
[ubuntu fetches and installs library]

karl@db1:~$ apt-cache search php5-imap
php5-imap - IMAP module for php5

karl@db1:~$ sudo apt-get install php5-imap
[ubuntu installs imap extension]

karl@db1:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
[apache restarts]

and now phpinfo() shows c-client running with imap and SSL support on, and I'm free to use imap_open() and all the other php imap functions I need to complete my email-to-unfudle-ticket script. Connecting to a gmail account especially requires the use of SSL, so I'm glad that was included.

[imap]

IMAP c-Client Version => 2004
SSL Support => enabled
Kerberos Support => enabled

thanks to chris fuller for helping me out!