I’ve never attempted to compile audacity…
It’s surprising that there aren’t “underground copies” on the Internet. I looked a couple of times (just out of curiosity, I don’t need ASIO) and I couldn’t find one. I guess Steinberg is really serious about enforcing their licensing.
There is a “Compiling Audacity” sub-forum and [u]here[/u] is a topic that points you to a link with the code & instructions.
I’ve never done anything like this before though I’m not computer illiterate.
As you may know, compiling is usually done by a programmer. You don’t have to know how to program but a compiler is a “programmer’s tool”.
I’m not an expert programmer but I have done quite a bit of programming over the years. Whenever I’ve installed a new compiler my goal for the 1st day is just to get get it download, installed, and configured to the point where I can compile “Hello World” (the simplest test-demonstration program). There’s always something tricky (or multiple things that are tricky) and it can be frustrating. I doesn’t always take a full day but but it’s usually a pain and big relief when that’s accomplished. The one exception was the IDE (compiler) for the Arduino. I think it took 15-minutes to download & install and get the “Blink LED” example running (there is no built-in display so you can’t run “Hello World”). I couldn’t believe how smoothly that went!
Audacity is a “big project”, there are libraries to install, and I’d guess it would take me 3-days or maybe longer! Once everything is set-up & configured it should be straight-forward, fast, and easy when a new version of Audacity is released and you have to do it again. (Except the switch-over to 64-bit probably wasn’t so easy.)