With a little luck I was able to compile and run the suite on Mac OS X (Panther).  The tricky bits to watch for:

1) Get the latest version of GNU automake (typically 1.8 these days) no matter what Fink says.

2) same with autoconf.

With these obstacles out of the way, you should get a fairly clean configure of the package, whereupon the compile is a cinch.

I recommend using OroborOSX (also from SourceForge) especially if the end user is unfamiliar with the process of installing X11.  OroborOSX also has some very nice added features and integrates well with the Mac UI.  You are quite correct that the DSKY wants an X server running before it will be happy.