OOo 1.9.55:
With 1.9.55, these patches, and the following configure line (8 line building 1.9.55 howto)
./configure --enable-libart --enable-libsn --enable-cups --enable-fontconfig --without-fonts --with-system-zlib --with-system-libxml --with-system-jpeg --with-system-mozilla --with-system-expat --with-system-freetype --with-system-curl --with-system-sablot --with-system-nas
then 1.9.55 builds against system components in a more friendly way. Only thing that is problematic is the ongoing requirement to patch mozilla to get xmlsecurity to link against it, see #moz262274#. But at least its down to just one symbol (PK11_GetCertFromPrivateKey), given this patchset, now. Drop –with-system-mozilla if you don’t want to patch your mozilla 
Sorting out system berkleydb is on hold while theres work under way to move from db3 to db4. Similiarly neon is out of date, and OOo needs to be updated to latest api, so –with-system-neon probably won’t work for now. I haven’t checked out system-python while python is also being updated to latest and greatest.
Additionally before building, setting
setenv ENABLE_GNOMEVFS TRUE
and
setenv ENABLE_GTK TRUE
will build the gnomevfs and gtk optional extras. These aren’t set from ./configure yet.
Seems to me that nas should have a –disable-nas seeing as I really don’t think its in real world use anymore. Perhaps a esd implementation could be stuffed in instead
workspaces:
The configure1.* patches are included in the configure1 workspace awaiting integration. There is no system-mozilla one until its clear what the PK11_GetCertFromPrivateKey story will be. The apparently gigantic ineturl1 isn’t as big as it looks, it implements the change from UniString to rtl::OUString[Buffer] for INetURLObject that I mentioned at the ooocon as a plausible performance improvement. A big self-extracting linux installer for ineturl1 is available here. Meanwhile gtkfpicker2 languishes in the wilderness until OOo Headquarters can build and test with gtk2.4 (which is soon I believe)
other:
Been trundling around on shiny new dublin tram system for the last couple of days sorting out my provisional driving licence. And have now successfuly negotiated getting my hands on one, fear me.