First, please stop spreading FUD. It does not take "a few hours", it takes ~30-40min. That's pretty bad, but not the end of the world.
Second, you don't "just" try to build it - there is an extensive test suite that should be made to pass before you even try building the thing. We're not completely crazy, we won't wait "a few hours" before every single change can be tested.
I know it kind of makes it "boring work" instead of "interesting ranting", but this is the reality.
I can't see an architecture doc, or other docs describing the build toolchain. Since pypy doesn't use commonly used build tools (or does it?) porting is going to be harder than something that uses a well know build toolchain like autotools/cmake/etc for example.
What would a high level porting strategy be? Get it running on CPython first, run tests..., set up platform specific details in files X,Y,Z, then try and translate? Perhaps the people who did the ARM port could write a short post on the strategy they took? What things can you disable to get a minimal pypy working first?
There is an architecture doc, but definitely there is no porting guide. I would start with sending a mail to pypy-dev or asking on IRC, but generally "get the tests running first, all of them" is a good start.
All I did was run the standard build target following the documentation provided.
My understanding is that while it's busy drawing pretty ascii art (which I have no problem with, by the way) it's building PyPy from the RPython source, which according to other users as recently as December of 2012 "takes ages":
Second, you don't "just" try to build it - there is an extensive test suite that should be made to pass before you even try building the thing. We're not completely crazy, we won't wait "a few hours" before every single change can be tested.
I know it kind of makes it "boring work" instead of "interesting ranting", but this is the reality.