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. rebuild the configuration files with autogen.sh sh autogen.sh --sysconfdir=/etc --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --localstatedir=/var 5. make distcheck (NB: won't work without docbook-utils -PL) 6. tag the tree git-tag -u 096c4dd3 -m'Version 2.3.xx' 2.3.xx 7. make Changelog-2.3.xx git-log 2.3.(xx-1).. > ChangeLog-2.3.xx 8. Copy ChangeLog-2.3.xx and fontconfig-2.3.xx.tar.gz to freedesktop.org:/srv/fontconfig.freedesktop.org/www/release 9. Update the Fontconfig Devel wiki page http://fontconfig.org/wiki/Devel 10. Compute md5sums for release files: md5sum fontconfig-2.3.xx.tar.gz ChangeLog-2.3.xx 11. Post a note to fontconfig@fontconfig.org. Include the md5sums. gpg sign the message.