trying isle-dc with 'make local'

[William Conlin]

I must be missing something simple.

I have tried following the instructions for  Local Development, but I'm not getting past the build.

I had exported drupal configs which I have in a tar.gz file. I placed that in a codebase folder.

"Simply place any exported Drupal site as the codebase folder in isle-dc and you're good to go."

Am I missing something? do I need to unzip the file?

This is probably the most interesting line I got to after running 'make local'

"

realpath: The Drush launcher could not find a Drupal site to operate on. Please do *one* of the following:
  - Navigate to any where within your Drupal project and try again.
  - Add --root=/path/to/drupal so Drush knows where your site is located./sites: No such file or directory
"

Any guidance appreciated.