Compiling external lib

Hey guys - I'd like to get some help with libavro in http://pecl.php.net/package/xcommerce - the package configuration depends on libavro and it errors out with instructions on how to install the bundled libavro. It's a bit tricky because libavro is scarce. I've only found an Ubuntu pkg for it and even that was in a PPA. To make matters more complex, the build of libavro requires cmake. Is there a proper way to automatically build libavro as part of the PECL install? If not, I may bite the bullet and provide full instructions on how to build libavro outside of PECL. https://github.com/johnj/php5-xcom - JJ