Fontconfig is built with the traditional configure script: $ ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man If you checked out from the git repository (as opposed to downloading a tarball), you need to run autogen.sh instead of configure: $ ./autogen.sh --sysconfdir=/etc --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man Either way, that should generate valid Makefiles, then: $ make $ make install If you're going to package fontconfig for release, there are several important steps: 1. Create new version sh new-version.sh 2.xx.xx 2. rebuild the configuration files with autogen.sh ./autogen.sh --sysconfdir=/etc --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --localstatedir=/var 3. make distcheck 4. Copy ChangeLog-2.x.y and fontconfig-2.x.y.tar.gz to freedesktop.org:/srv/www.freedesktop.org/www/software/fontconfig/release 5. Update the Fontconfig Devel wiki page https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/fontconfig/Devel/ 6. Update the fontconfig documentation scp -rp doc/fontconfig-user.html doc/fontconfig-devel freedesktop.org:/srv/www.freedesktop.org/www/software/fontconfig 7. Compute md5sums for release files: md5sum fontconfig-2.4.x.tar.gz ChangeLog-2.4.x 8. Post a note to fontconfig@fontconfig.org. Include the md5sums. gpg sign the message.