In README.md, you mention that

People seem to have varying levels of success with the linux binary

I believe that this may be because compiling vty requires a copy of of libtinfo.so. The message stating this may be confusing since it’s displayed long before the error is actually recognized by stack and the build is terminated, and the description for the libtinfo packages on Ubuntu state that it’s deprecated/transitional package. In fact, what is needed is libncurses-dev (on Debian/Ubuntu) or an equivalent library providding development access to ncurses.