even official gnus can't be built with debian emacs
One even gets http://debian.linux.org.tw/debian/pool/main/g/gnus/gnus_5.10.2.orig.tar.gz
and follows the instructions
$ make
cd lisp && make EMACS="emacs" lispdir="/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp" all
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/jidanni/tmp/gnus-5.10.2/lisp'
rm -f *.elc gnus-load.el
URLDIR=/usr/share/emacs/21.2/site-lisp/url/ W3DIR=/usr/share/emacs21/site-lisp/w3-el/ lispdir=/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp srcdir=. emacs -batch -q -no-site-file -l ./dgnushack.el -f dgnushack-make-cus-load .
Loading cus-dep...
Directory .
Generating cus-load.el...
Wrong type argument: stringp, (mm-inline-text-html-with-images custom-variable)
make[1]: *** [gnus-load.el] Error 255
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/jidanni/tmp/gnus-5.10.2/lisp'
make: *** [lick] Error 2
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