This will mean the docs just won't get built. They are available as a tarball, a deb or an rpm, or the individual components from Dave Mason's page . Then it should build. This affects people who install binary rpms or debs. It does not affect people using tarballs, source rpms or debs with the source.
Binary packages come in two sorts.
The second sort are what you need in addition if you want to compile and install new programs that rely on other programs' code. They contain header files which the new programs you want to compile will look for. You should probably use apt-get because it will automatically figure out dependencies. Change to the directory containing it, run make uninstall and hope someone wrote the rule which will do this for you.