If you build NSD directly from the Subversion repository, you will need the (gnu) autotools to generate the configure script. On most systems, this can simply be done by using autoreconf: autoreconf -fi This will call autoconf, autoheader, aclocal etc. After this you can build normally with configure and make, see the general README for further information on this. Some systems do not have a symlink to separate versions, so you will have to use the specific version name. It should work with at least 2.53 and 2.59. The actual executable name may differ on various systems, most of the times it is either called autoreconf-2.59 or autoreconf259 Some systems also do not have a standard aclocal link, in which case you will have to tell autoreconf what aclocal executable to use. This can be done by setting the ACLOCAL environment variable. It should work with aclocal 1.4, 1.5 and 1.9. Examples of complete commands: ACLOCAL=aclocal19 autoreconf259 ACLOCAL=aclocal-1.9 autoreconf-2.59