For contributor builds, Conky uses mise to install the pinned developer tools. From the repository root, run:

mise install
mise run doctor
mise run configure
mise run build
mise run test

mise run doctor checks for native libraries that still come from your system package manager, such as X11, Cairo, Lua, Imlib2, librsvg, ncurses, and libxml2.

If you want to run CMake manually or customize build options, the direct CMake flow is:

1. From the top-level source directory, create a build directory and change into it:

mkdir build
cd build

2. Run the CMake configuration step:

cmake ../ # pass the path to the sources to cmake

OR

ccmake ../ # use the ncurses interface instead, or try cmake-gui

3. Build and install as usual:

make
sudo make install # optional

Conky provides a number of build options. The easiest way to explore them is to use ccmake or cmake-gui.

Some build-time features, such as documentation generation, require third-party tools. CMake will usually tell you when one is missing. For documentation generation, you will need the docbook2X package, which is available on most distributions.