Got bored of having to run 'make install' when hacking on Evolution, partly because libtool insanity makes it take too long — as for some reason it relinks everything as it installs it. Perhaps that was needed for FORTRAN77 programs on OSF/1, but it isn't needed on my modern Linux system. I hate libtool. But even without that, re-running 'make install' every time you change a line of code is a pain.
For a while I took to manually symlinking the libraries and executables I was working on, from my build directory into their installed locations. But I kept missing some out and that was a pain too.
My current solution, which excited mbarnes sufficiently that I felt I ought to share it more widely, is to re-run autogen.sh with the --enable-fast-install argument, then build it and run 'make INSTALL=install_symlink.sh install'. Then all files get installed as symlinks instead of being copied, and all I have to do is hack code, type 'make', and run evolution again.
The script is a dirty hack and there are much better ways to do it — some of which would even cope with filenames that have spaces in. But it works for me, and makes Evolution hacking a little easier.
[UPDATE: fucking libtool. I think you also need to do 'sed s/need_relink=yes/need_relink=no/ -i libtool' in your build directory, then to stop it fucking you over again also 'sudo chattr +i libtool'.]