I've tried unsuccessfully to build vlc in the past, both on linux and win32.
It seems that the documentation on he build process lags way behind.
Might I suggest an outrageous thing:
make available a virtual box image of debian or similar with all the required toolset for building installed.
Then every joe can hack at the code without having to deal with the unrelated (and seemingly very complex) build process.
The build instruction can then be shortened a lot and kept up to date - as long as new images are made.
How crazy is that?