> A large part of that, from what I've encountered ...
Since I was talking about Makefile that run unmodified on any BSD and Linux, I'm clearly not talking about the kind of crappy build scripts you are mentioning. Those are an issue of their own.
> a lot of source compiles not tweaked to handle OSX
The problem is that you have to tweak scripts. You have to tweak even clean, simple scripts or libraries that use only portable constructs (i.e. without any hard-coded paths and other stupid stuff). And that's really nasty.
What experience is this based on? In my 6 years experience using a Mac as my primary machine, I've never had a higher rate of problems installing open source software with the default build scripts than on Linux.
Also, there's Macports, Fink, and Homebrew, which make it effortless.
Since I was talking about Makefile that run unmodified on any BSD and Linux, I'm clearly not talking about the kind of crappy build scripts you are mentioning. Those are an issue of their own.
> a lot of source compiles not tweaked to handle OSX
The problem is that you have to tweak scripts. You have to tweak even clean, simple scripts or libraries that use only portable constructs (i.e. without any hard-coded paths and other stupid stuff). And that's really nasty.