Thanks to AUR, I haven’t manually run a autoconf build in years, but I remember them being very fiddly. Lots of “google for header file, install and retry”.

I think maintainer burn-out somewhat contributes to the hostile approach some projects have, anything that is accepted into a project needs to be maintained and comes with a risk of being broken in the future. If the original committer isnt around, then the maintainers either have to take on that burden, or remove it.

Its a tough cycle to break, I don’t know what the answer is.