compiling & debugging native libs in node 0.7 is vastly easier, so I'm happy that 0.8 will be here soon. Previously you'd get a pretty generic hardcoded error message about failure to compile/link and it wouldn't be obvious what was the underlying issue. Also, gyp is a lot easier to use than waf -- it just generates the makefiles that are used to do the compilation.

The solution was to compile in 0.7 to see the error, then go back to 0.6 to make the module.

(I'll also mention I haven't run into any native compatibility issues between 0.6 & 0.7 yet)