If you hate compiling the firmware, Reprap firmware is just for you: it comes precompiled, just grab the binary file, put it on SD card (rename to firmware.bin) and boot the board. Or with Duet, upload it in the web UI. Not sure if the web ui update works on other boards.

Only time you need to update the firmware is when new version is released. And it's still the same thing, grab the binary and off you go.

That's the beauty of it, everything is configured in files on the sdcard and if using the web UI, you can use that to do the changes.

I did set up the compilation environment when I first started using Reprap fw because I though that to get my custom extruder relay setup to work I would need the change how some I/O-pins were controlled. Turned out that even those can be configured with configuration files as you please so that exercise was kinda wasted (maybe learned something, maybe not).