Not denying that. Lua by itself is easy. The thing is, to compile Zile, you need to first x-compile Lua, then x-compile luarocks, install the necessary Lua packages, then continue with x-compiling zile.

Comparatively, I've found that x-compiling vanilla emacs `--without-x` is often more easier and faster.

X-compiling Mg is more or less "gcc *.c" which is very straight-forward.