As others have commented before, would be great to have a pre-compiled binary package :-)

Having said that, the build process failed for me - the configure script can't find sqlite3 and I'm not sure how to fix that.

Please see below for details:

Following https://github.com/mnagel/simple-scan/blob/master/README.md#building

1. bzr branch lp:simple-scan simple-scan && cd simple-scan
bzr was not installed, sudo apt-get install bzr - OK

2. sudo apt-get build-dep simple-scan
This brings in ~150MB of stuff (is all of that necessary to build simple-scan or is there a lighter selection of packages we could get away with?) - works OK.

3. sudo apt-get install valac-0.16 vala-0.16
Brings in another 25MB of stuff - works OK

4. sudo update-alternatives --config valac
Works fine, vala-0.14 was default, selected vala-0.16

5. ./autogen.sh

alex@bigboy:~/ss/simple-scan$ ./autogen.sh
/usr/bin/gnome-autogen.sh
checking for autoconf >= 2.53...
  testing autoconf2.50... not found.
  testing autoconf... found 2.68
checking for automake >= 1.7...
  testing automake-1.11... found 1.11.3
checking for intltool >= 0.30...
  testing intltoolize... found 0.50.2
checking for pkg-config >= 0.14.0...
  testing pkg-config... found 0.26
checking for gnome-common >= 2.3.0...
  testing gnome-doc-common... found 3.1.0
Checking for required M4 macros...
Checking for forbidden M4 macros...
**Warning**: I am going to run `configure' with no arguments.
If you wish to pass any to it, please specify them on the
`./autogen.sh' command line.

Processing ./configure.ac
Running intltoolize...
Running gnome-doc-common...
Running aclocal-1.11...
Running autoconf...
Running automake-1.11...
configure.ac:10: installing `./compile'
configure.ac:4: installing `./install-sh'
configure.ac:4: installing `./missing'
src/Makefile.am: installing `./depcomp'
Running ./configure --enable-maintainer-mode ...
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether make supports nested variables... yes
checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... yes
checking for valac... /usr/bin/valac
checking /usr/bin/valac is at least version 0.16.0... yes
checking for style of include used by make... GNU
checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking for suffix of executables... 
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking dependency style of gcc... gcc3
checking whether gcc and cc understand -c and -o together... yes
checking for pkg-config... /usr/bin/pkg-config
checking pkg-config is at least version 0.16... yes
checking for SIMPLE_SCAN... no
configure: error: Package requirements (
    glib-2.0 >= 2.32
    gtk+-3.0
    gmodule-export-2.0
    gthread-2.0
    zlib
    cairo
    gdk-pixbuf-2.0
    gudev-1.0
    sqlite3
) were not met:

No package 'sqlite3' found

Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.

Alternatively, you may set the environment variables SIMPLE_SCAN_CFLAGS
and SIMPLE_SCAN_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details.
alex@bigboy:~/ss/simple-scan$ 

OK, sudo apt-get install sqlite3... OK

Then ./autogen.sh once more, but it gives us the same error:
<snip>
configure: error: Package requirements (
    glib-2.0 >= 2.32
    gtk+-3.0
    gmodule-export-2.0
    gthread-2.0
    zlib
    cairo
    gdk-pixbuf-2.0
    gudev-1.0
    sqlite3
) were not met:

No package 'sqlite3' found

How should one proceed from here?