calcserver installs in a way that should be familiar to most that have installed modern Gnu software. To install from a .tar.gz distribution: tar zxvf calcserver-XXX.tar.gz cd calcserver-XXX ./configure --prefix=${DIFXROOT} make (maybe become root here) make install To install from a fresh svn checkout, run the following: aclocal libtoolize --copy --force autoconf automake -a ./configure --prefix=${DIFXROOT} make # (su root?) make install After an svn update, these steps do not need to be rerun. usually just "make" will update everything properly, but sometimes it is necessary to run "autoreconf" before compiling again. If that doesn't work, one can always fall back on the above sequence of commands.