When I try to build this in Ubuntu 16.04 from the source:

$ ./autogen.sh

outputs:

aclocal: error: configure.ac:23: file 'pkg.m4' does not exist
autoreconf: aclocal failed with exit status: 1

I tried the fixes described here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/468661/how-to-fix-pkg-prog-pkg-config-command-not-found-error/468895 ; for instance:

$ aclocal --print-ac-dir
outputs: /usr/share/aclocal

and
$ find /usr -name "pkg.m4"
outputs: /usr/share/aclocal/pkg.m4

After working through that askubuntu page, both the commands
$sed 's/:/\n/g' <<< "$PATH"
and $sed 's/:/\n/g' <<< "$ACLOCAL_PATH"

show that the path /usr/share/aclocal is recognized after I added it with the export command ... so why won't this build???

When I ran $qmake "USE_UPNP=-"
that just had warnings and no errors but I don't see a daemon created in the src directory from that.

$./configure
outputs: configure: error: cannot find install-sh, install.sh, or shtool in src/build-aux "."/src/build-aux
(probably because autogen had the error-and-failure-with-exit mentioned at the top).

I haven't yet delved very deeply into QT-Creator... but I'm kind of hitting the wall here on this (without resorting to that when the command-line seems a lot simpler).

Also, an issues page at the Github would probably be useful because this situation and similar ones is probably likely to arise again.