Familiarity with make may be part of it, but I picked up that level of familiarity in about five minutes. Common problem: program adds -ldl to linker flags (doesn't work on OpenBSD). Makefile fix: vi Makefile, /-ldl, xxxx, :wq. Done. Autofix: I dunno, but I'm sure it involves a lot more typing. Most makefiles are simple, most makefile problems and their fixes are simpler still. The dumbest thing that could possibly work often does.