The djbwares toolset is known to build, run, and work on FreeBSD 10, PC-BSD 10, NetBSD 10, Debian Linux version 12, and OpenBSD version 5.9. It should similarly build, run, and work on any modern BSD and on any modern Linux flavour.
The source is structured as a slashpackage-style package.
It requires redo to build, and builds with the gcc and clang compilers. The build system attempts to autodetect the available compiler, as well as various operating-system-dependant features.
To just build the toolset from source, without packaging the binaries:
package/compile
This gives you:
command/, which you can just add to your PATH environment variable or symbolically link to;
manual/, which you can just add to your MANPATH environment variable or symbolically link to;
header/;
library/; and
guide/.
The build process updates files in these directories atomically. It doesn't create part-written executables or other files at their final names. So you can run things straight out of these directories whilst rebuilding.
To clean the build run
package/clean or just rm -r build/
To clean the build, packaging, and built files run
package/distclean or just rm -r build/ command/ manual/ header/ library/ guide/
To build installable binary packages on FreeBSD, TrueOS, NetBSD, or OpenBSD run
package/bsd/prepare && bsd/rules clean build binary
On FreeBSD and TrueOS this requires pkg version 1.2 or later in order to avoid segmentation faults and other bugs. So ensure that pkg is up to that version in your ports tree.
To build the binary packages on Debian Linux run
package/debian/prepare && dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc
Putting things into places outwith the self-contained directory is "exporting".
To export to /usr/local run (as the superuser)
package/export /usr/local