The database initialisation uses ALTER TABLE…DROP, which was introduced to sqlite 3.35 in 2023.
The Debian version of sqlite is older than this, so when building+running on Debian, pimsync won't start.
Try to rethink database initialisation to avoid calling DROP. Strictly speaking, we only need this when upgrading a database from an older version.
FWIW: we should provide a easy recipe for locally compiling a statically linked binary, which would remove an entire class of headaches.
Debian bullseye (current LTS) ships sqlite 3.34: https://repology.org/project/sqlite/versions