Problems getting panel to work

[Mark Andrew Hulme-Jones <ceemahj cee hw ac uk>]

Having had extreme bother getting panel to compile from the default gnome
ditribution, (heck, I even tried the cvs distribution to see if it was
just a temporary problem... ) to the extent that in the end I simply gave
up thinking it
not worth the bother, I was gladdened to find that someone had gone to the
bother of distributing rpms of the whole thing, making my life a little
easier...

However, after installing the gnome and the gtk rpms, I am still having
exactly the same problem...

The panel program itself compiles and runs fine, it just has enormous
trouble finding its little applet programs "create_applet: could not find
applet "Menu"" is an example of one of the errors it gives... So, I think
to myself, what can possobly be causing this? I check the libraries and
find that the rpm has failed to install libpanel_*.so files, only
libpanel_*.so.0.0.0, so I run ldconfig... This creates links to
libpanel_*.so.0, and leaves me getting exactly the same errors as
before... So, I manually create symbolic links called libpanel_*.so...
This yields the cryptic error message

panel: error in loading shared libraries
/usr/lib/./libpanel_mailcheck.so: undefined symbol: gtk_drawing_area_new

or similar, depending on which libraries it can find... (ie which ones I
create the links to...)

Hmm, think I, this must be a problem with the runtime linker, no? So I
check which libraries the libpanel_*.so libraries are linked to, only to
find that ldd reckons that every one of them is _statically_ linked???

I'm just about hauling every hair out of my head right now, having wasted
three nights sleep now sitting up waiting for various compiles, etc etc
etc, only to find that the same kind of problems remain... 

Am I being incredibly stupid? I know gnome is alpha, and as such I can
expect to have to hack around a little bit, but when an out-of-the-box
redhat 5 distribution can't even get the rpms to work, what's a guy to do?

I'd appreciate anyones ideas, so that I can get to sleep, I have to be up
again in four hours time....


Mark