I finally overcame the obstacles and inertia and got a working working GNOME 2.3.x built. I had to bail out on the much preferable jhbuild scripts because of some unexplainable auto tools problems, but prayer to the God of CVS and the sacrifice of five sheep seems to have brought some marginal success. I still don’t wanna be a hacker, but now at least I can play one a bit to get some work done.