Note that this is php and therefor its not trivial to install. If you want a smooth logic solution, go for perl. If you want PHP - or if you need it :) - read on.

The configure-command may fail several times until you succeed. Be sure to remove the configure-cache every time to make configure really recheck everything.

rm config.cache

go to ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap/ and load the latest version. Usually this is imap.tar.Z. Untar it and enter the folder and perform a

make lnp

lnp is the most generic plattform. slx is for older linux (I used it earlier when I didnt need ssl). See the makefile for all options. Also look at KB-188 for a older howto)

If the make-file suceeds, you dont need to install anything. Just create a lib and a include-folder where you are (in the root of your imap-200x-tarball) and copy all files from c-client - folders to include and to lib. Then enter the lib and create a symlink:

ln -s c-client.a libc-client.a

Dont copy any of these files to your system-lib or system-include or they mess with some other stuff.
Just tell php-configure where to find your nice lib+include with the --with-imap=/usr/src/imap-2007 (or whatever your path is) - command

./configure --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs --with-openssl --with-pgsql --with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql --with-xml --with-dom --with-gettext --with-imap=/usr/src/imap-2007 --enable-ftp --with-gd --with-png --enable-exif --with-jpeg --with-jpeg-dir=jpeg-6b --with-zlib --with-imap-ssl --with-mcrypt --with-iconv --enable-mbstring=all --enable-mbregex --with-mime-magic