update:
Thanks for the help @mfalkvidd
I managed to get the make utility installed. Hopefully this will help anyone else running into this problem:
had to update and upgrade before it would work

apk update
...
apk upgrade
...
apk add build-base

I am still experiencing the Failed init system

[SECTION] Detecting target machine.
  [OK] machine detected: SoC=BCM2836, Type=unknown, CPU=armv7l.
[SECTION] Detecting SPI driver.
  [OK] SPI driver detected:BCM.
[SECTION] Detecting init system.
  [FAILED] unknown init system.
[SECTION] Saving configuration.
[SECTION] Cleaning previous builds.
[OK] Finished.

Its like it doesn't know where my init files are. Digging around a little in the configure code, I see that the prefix is usr/local/

Should I change that to where my MySensors directory is? Or do I need to move the init scrips out of the initscripts directory?

Doing a little digging I have realized that the last two lines of my last post were dumb questions.
The init system is inherent to the linux distro, not the MySensors package. I have posted a plea for help on the HassIO forum (which seems to be down right now, otherwise i would include a link) .

I will update this post once/if I get a reply so hopefully we can have a solution on record.