Software needs to be built. The problem is as the complexity increases, the build suffers. If you use make, you should look into "Jam". It is available here: http://freetype.sourceforge.net/jam/index.html and the original is still available on the perforce website, but you want to use the one from Source Forge (SF) anyway.

Here is a web page on how build times have been drastically reduced by switching from make to jam: http://public.perforce.com/guest/neal_firth/JamUseI.html