Many of our migrations from Stack Overflow are questions asking for help compiling a particular piece of software (recent example: https://serverfault.com/questions/440591/error-with-internationalization-extension-while-compiling-php-5-4-8).

These questions have historically been a gray area on Server Fault - we have lots of cases where we help people by telling them "You need to install the foolib-devel package", but we have an equal number of cases where so little effort was put forward that we closed the question and sent the user packing.

I think the time has come to establish a consensus on "Help me with compiling stuff" questions in the context of professional system administration, so I put it to the mob:

• How much help should we offer?
• How much effort does the OP need to show to merit that help?