On Linux, install the development packages for FreeType, Cairo, and GLib. For example, on Ubuntu / Debian, you would do:

sudo apt-get install gcc g++ libfreetype6-dev libglib2.0-dev libcairo2-dev
      

whereas on Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, and other Red Hat based systems you would do:

sudo yum install gcc gcc-c++ freetype-devel glib2-devel cairo-devel
      

or using MacPorts:

sudo port install freetype glib2 cairo
      

If you are using a tarball, you can now proceed to running configure and make as with any other standard package. That should leave you with a shared library in src/, and a few utility programs including hb-view and hb-shape under util/.

If you are bootstraping from git, you need a few more tools before you can run autogen.sh for the first time. Namely, pkg-config and ragel. Again, on Ubuntu / Debian:

sudo apt-get install autoconf automake libtool pkg-config ragel gtk-doc-tools
      

and on Fedora, RHEL, CentOS:

sudo yum install autoconf automake libtool pkgconfig ragel gtk-doc
      

or using MacPorts:

sudo port install autoconf automake libtool pkgconfig ragel gtk-doc