As a guy that would naturally be in the camp of "installing packages is never okay", I also live in the more practical world where people want things to work. I think the compromise you're suggesting is a pretty good one. I think the highest quality implementation here would be.

Try to find prebuilt and download.

See if you can compile from source if a compiler is installed.

If no compiler: prompt to install via sudo apt and explaining why, also give option to abort and have the user install a compiler themselves.

This isn't perfect, but limits the cases where prompting is necessary.

I'm going to see if I can make prebuilt versions work :) But thanks!