Fontconfig is built with the traditional configure script: $ ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man This should generate valid Makefiles, then: $ make $ make install If you're going to package fontconfig for release, there are several important steps: 1. Update the version numbers configure.in fontconfig/fontconfig.h 2. Fix the README Change version number Set the date 3. Commit those changes 4. make checkdist 5. tag the tree cvs tag fc-2_2_xx 6. Split out the ChangeLog into ChangeLog-2.2.xx with the changes since the previous release 7. Copy ChangeLog-2.2.xx and fontconfig-2.2.xx.tar.gz to freedesktop.org:~fontconfig/public_html/release 8. Update the Fontconfig Devel wiki page http://freedesktop.org/Software/FontconfigDevel 9. Post a note to fontconfig@fontconfig.org