I was experiencing the same issue as the OP. I cloned the repo, installed the one dependency noted in the READMEREADME, built and installed it, and it works great. Problem solved.
$ git clone https://github.com/zoltanp/xrandr-invert-colors.git
$ apt-get install libxcb-randr0-dev
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ git clone https://github.com/zoltanp/xrandr-invert-colors.git
$ apt-get install libxcb-randr0-dev
$ make
$ sudo make install
I took a look at the source code. The bulk of the work is done with a call into the xcb library to set the gamma ramp. The code essentially loops over the number of attached screens, creates a gamma ramp, inverts it, and sets it on that screen. Very simple, and there's no other X program that does this, to my knowledge.