[Users] Compiling from source

[R. Harkins]

Hello to the Claws Mail world:
I started using Claws Mail as Eudora faded.  Thank you.

This 1st message is asking for some guidance.  CM has been used on many
operating systems and boxes with the archive of emails moved forward
each time.  It has worked well with only minor problems.  

Currently, rendering HTML is giving me fits.  FreeBSD 11 & 12 along
with Ubuntu 18.04 have been tried (both hardware and virtual machines).
 Unfortunately, the distributed version of CM lags.  Compiling from git
has been accomplished on a virtual machine running FreeBSD 12.1 with
inconsistent HTML results.

The Question:  What operating system and environment would minimise the
effort in a Claws Mail virtual machine (compiling from claws-mail.org
source)?