dmenu is an efficient dynamic menu for X. this rendition is patched with simple qol patches and a custom edit to allow changing thickness/height
In order to build dmenu you need the Xlib header files as well as Xft and Fontconfig.
Edit config.mk to match your local setup (dmenu is installed into the /usr/local namespace by default).
Afterwards enter the following command to build and install dmenu (if necessary as root):
make clean install
See the dmenu(1) man page for details.