If you have a directory containing the tools module as well as one or more dictionary modules, you already have a FreeDict build tree.

If you sometimes work on dictionary modules outside the FreeDict build tree (hey, it is a synonym of FREEDICTDIR!), you can set up the environment variable FREEDICTDIR to point to that directory. Afterwards the Makefile will be able to find the tools directory.

There also is a special kind of build tree, the release build tree. This tree does not contain the latest CVS revisions of all files, but it is intended to contain only the revisions that the maintainers of the dictionary modules have marked as stable. For more information, please refer to the manage-buildtree.pl script in the tools directory.