By this point, it's absolutely essential to have chosen a project.

The Freeciv examples are just that: examples. The only way to learn how to build a project from source is to build it from source.

If you are an individual learner, you should choose a project that interests you. If you are an instructor, you can either allow the students to pursue their own individual projects, or you can select a single project for the class. Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses -- but it's essential to have chosen a project by this point.

One good source for inspiration is the Open Hatch Project. They do a good job of aggregating open source projects that have tasks suitable for beginners.

Another possible exercise: figure out why a warning is being thrown during compilation. Dig around Google. What can you find? Can you figure out why this error is being thrown? Is it worth fixing this warning? Why or why not? (Note: in the example given in the chapter, googling the error itself pretty much tells you *exactly* why the error is happening, and why it's probably not worth fixing.)

A note for potential collaborators: in the Java world, Ant and Maven are as ubiquitous as are the Autotools in C/C++ projects. A completely parallel chapter could be written using a project based on Ant or Maven instead of Autotools.