Hm, not sure about the exact problem you're having, I've never used those packages. Getting stuff to compile can be tricky, experience helps because you start seeing the same problems over and over again. There is some theory but usually you only need a small subset of the theory to get stuff to compile -- the person who put together the package is responsible for the rest. Normally when I compile stuff, I read the README and INSTALL files, then do ./configure followed by make followed, optionally, by make install. Most packages will compile this way out-of-the-box. If they don't it's usually because a) they can't find a .h file (compiler error), or b) they can't find a statically linked library (linker error). Statically linked libraries and associated .h files usually come in debian packages ending in "-dev". Figuring out which file comes in which package can be guesswork, maybe "apt-cache search" will help. Sometimes you already have the files, but they're in a different place than the makefile thinks they are. For example, a .h file might be in /usr/include rather than /usr/local/include.
I've never had to read a configure script. These things are usually automatically generated and I don't mess with them. But that's just me. If you've got the time, teaching yourself some basic programming (the first chapter of Kernighan and Richie's The C Programming Language, 2nd ed. is a good start) and some UNIX tools like gcc and make, might make all this more understandable. -chris
