Please see more documentation in the doc/ directory. For info on installing keep reading: mark5access 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 mark5access-XXX.tar.gz cd mark5access-XXX ./configure --prefix= (replace with the base install dir) make (maybe become root here) make install To install from a fresh svn checkout, run the following: aclocal libtoolize --copy --force autoconf autoheader automake -a -c ./configure --enable-python --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. A make install will copy libraries into /lib . Make sure this path is either in /etc/ld.so.conf (ie, for /usr/local and /usr, usually), or in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH. In the former case, running /sbin/ldconfig might be necessary to update some files. make install will also copy a package config file into /lib/pkgconfig. Make sure this path is in your PKG_CONFIG_PATH if you are to compile against this library. you can test this by running pkg-config --cflags mark5access If you get a sensible answer then you are set.