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Coming from an embedded systems background, when working with resource-limited embedded systems the usual solution is to cross-compile. You'd gain compilation speed (assuming your desktop has better specs than a 500MB-RAM Cortex ARM) as well as bypass memory problems like the one you're having.

The eros stack was started a while back to help get ROS onto more embedded systems. I'm not sure how far along it is, but there seems to be some helpful tutorials:

http://www.ros.org/wiki/eros/CrossCompileBuildEnvironment