To me "error: jack/jack.h: No such file or directory" simply means that the compiler can't find the file. It gives no further info than that. I got quite confused at this stage as I had Jack installed and running. I even searched google for this error and found very little. Now (after gaining info from this list) I understand that headers are needed for the specified audio server (something that is not stated in the official list of dependencies or at least from my reading of it).
I wouldn't expect Ubuntu-specific dependencies to be implemented by the chuck developers, but it's not something that is useless either. I'd like to incorporate it into some ubuntu documentation (probably the best place for it) and maybe other distribution communities could do the same, possibly having the ChucK website provide links to said documentation.
On a side note, source is rarely ever needed in getting software for a linux system - from my experience. If it's not in the repos, there's usually a deb or rpm for download. In the case of a source file, most give quite detailed dependency listings and I still hold that ChucK needs to at least add that headers (often found in the dev libs) are needed. Correct me if this is wrong. It'd also be nice to hear from someone else on the matter as it's clear that Atte thinks the above error message is quite obvious to fix and I don't.
-Eric