Building on Unix with git, gcc and autotools Home page for json-c: http://oss.metaparadigm.com/json-c/ Github repo for json-c: https://github.com/json-c/json-c $ git clone https://github.com/json-c/json-c.git $ cd json-c $ sh autogen.sh Then $ ./configure $ make $ make install To build and run the test programs run $ make check Linking to libjson If your system has pkgconfig then you can just add this to your makefile CFLAGS += $(shell pkg-config --cflags json) LDFLAGS += $(shell pkg-config --libs json)