I’m very new to Linux. Currently tinkering with Nobara and wanted to install st. I was able to successfully install it last night but when I started attempting to patch it for customization purposes I think I messed something up. I had needed to remove st multiple times and re-install so I could start fresh and fix my errors. Now when I attempt to run make clean install I get a host of errors related to packages that are installed but can’t seem to be found?

[astralpath@nobara-pc st]$ sudo make clean install
[sudo] password for astralpath: 
rm -f st st.o x.o st-0.9.tar.gz
c99 -I/usr/X11R6/include  `pkg-config --cflags fontconfig`  `pkg-config --cflags freetype2` -DVERSION=\"0.9\" -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=600  -O1 -c st.c
Package fontconfig was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `fontconfig.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
Package 'fontconfig', required by 'virtual:world', not found
Package freetype2 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `freetype2.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
Package 'freetype2', required by 'virtual:world', not found
c99 -I/usr/X11R6/include  `pkg-config --cflags fontconfig`  `pkg-config --cflags freetype2` -DVERSION=\"0.9\" -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=600  -O1 -c x.c
Package fontconfig was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `fontconfig.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
Package 'fontconfig', required by 'virtual:world', not found
Package freetype2 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `freetype2.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
Package 'freetype2', required by 'virtual:world', not found
x.c:15:10: fatal error: X11/Xft/Xft.h: No such file or directory
   15 | #include <X11/Xft/Xft.h>
      |          ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
make: *** [Makefile:16: x.o] Error 1

I’m not sure why these issues are occurring now. Could someone help point me in the right direction to troubleshoot? I’m really lost on how to proceed even though the error output seems to be giving me some pretty explicit instructions.

Thanks in advance :)–

  • JATtho
    2·
    1 year ago

    Please, never run plain “sudo make install” on a package managed system. With linux from scratch it might make sense… Doing so will “install” the thing (copy the files), but the copied files are foreign to the package manager. You cannot easily undo this, and can cause issues in future.

    You had a compiler error about missing header file, libXft is from Xorg project. “devel” versions of packages usually provide these files.

    st is from suckless project so it doesn’t need much to be “installed”: copy the built binaries into ~/bin/ or /opt/ and set your user PATH to look into those dirs. Check your user env if you need to modify the PATH.