In order to build muttator, you also need to checkout vimperator from: http://vimperator.mozdev.org. And symlink the following files: cd muttator/src ln -s ../../vimperator/src/Makefile.common . ln -s ../../vimperator/src/content . If you want to check-in changes, don't forget to also commit the vimperator part inside the local vimperator/ directory.