One of the most maddening things I've had to do is compile on Solaris without the warm/fuzzy GNU'ness. Remember these things:

1. add gcc
2. add bison
3. add /usr/ccs/bin & /usr/local/bin to path

Use this command to purge old configs and files from your system that are in uninstalled packages:

$ dpkg --get-selections | awk '/deinstall/ {print $1}' | xargs dpkg --purge