First, you need to build and install libstrophe:

git clone git://github.com/dustin/libstrophe.git
cd libstrophe
git submodule init
git submodule update
./bootstrap.sh
./configure
make

And then install it:

mkdir ~/{lib,include}
cp *.h ~/include
cp *.a ~/lib

Now you're ready to build the library and example application.

git clone git://github.com/northscale/libconflate.git
cd libconflate
make

There's a bit of infrastructure required to see it all work, but the example (bot.c) is ready to talk to your xmpp server and handle messages.

./examples/bot myjid@example.com mypassword

(optionally, you can specify a third argument to tell it exactly what xmpp server to connect to if you'd like to avoid SRV lookups)