Recently I've been compiling stuff from source and it's really been a pain ... not because it's hard to do (usually just ./configure; make; make install), but because it only works half the time, and even if it compiles it may or may not work.
Why doesn't it compile ? Usually because there is a bug in the code and/or a bug in the compiler. The newest gcc keeps giving errors about "extra qualifications", and then I have to go in there and fix it myself. But sometimes the source is just completely fucked and it'll take a really long time to fix. (I don't trust myself enough to fix anything too major, after all I haven't written a large C++ program in a while, and I forgot a lot).
Well I guess the only thing to do is push forward, improve gcc error handling, and maybe get program writers to be a little more careful and maybe test the source code for compilability before releasing it !
I dunno, I'm just so fucking sick of fixing code ! So far out of all the source code I downloaded (in C++, usually game related) only half of it has compiled properly without intervention. What about people who don't know enough C or C++ to fix this shit ? They just stick to the binaries like I used to ... and what if there are no binaries ... then you're fucked !