README.md says:
You do not need to build this repo in order to make changes (for a pull
request, or for local development).
but this is not true. An unbuilt frida-tools does not work:
frida-tools-unbuilt$ export PYTHONPATH=$(pwd)
frida-tools-unbuilt$ frida-trace -i puts ~/wrk/learn/c/hello/hello
Spawning `/home/scott/wrk/learn/c/hello/hello`...
Instrumenting...
Failed to start tracing: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/scott/wrk/frida/frida-tools-unbuilt/frida_tools/tracer_agent.js'
[normal output from the target program follows]
The problem is that tracer_agent.js is missing, which is solved by running make, which seems to be precisely what the README.md message is saying is not necessary.