In debian and ubuntu, we are now linking with strict DSO rules (wiki.debian.org/ToolChain/DSOLinking), which means, not indirect link between libraries.

I noted 2 issues in gnome-panel when trying to rebuilding it: one with xrandr and the other with x11 library. 

The kind of output with such a build is the following:
libtool: link: gcc -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -Wnested-externs -Wpointer-arith -Wno-sign-compare -g -O2 -g -Wall -O2 -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -o gnome-desktop-item-edit gnome-desktop-item-edit.o panel-ditem-editor.o panel-marshal.o panel-util.o xstuff.o -pthread  ../gnome-panel/libpanel-util/.libs/libpanel-util.a -L/lib -lgnome-desktop-2 -lstartup-notification-1 /usr/lib/libgconf-2.so -lgnome-menu -lcanberra-gtk -lcanberra /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so /usr/lib/libatk-1.0.so /usr/lib/libgio-2.0.so /usr/lib/libpangoft2-1.0.so /usr/lib/libpangocairo-1.0.so -lgdk_pixbuf-2.0 -lm /usr/lib/libcairo.so -lpng12 /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.so /usr/lib/libfreetype.so -lfontconfig /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so -ldbus-glib-1 -ldbus-1 -lpthread /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so /usr/lib/libgthread-2.0.so -lrt /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so -pthread
/usr/bin/ld: xstuff.o: undefined reference to symbol 'XDeleteProperty'
/usr/bin/ld: note: 'XDeleteProperty' is defined in DSO /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 so try adding it to the linker command line
/usr/lib/libX11.so.6: could not read symbols: Invalid operation
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Here is a patch to fix those build issues. Do not hesitate if you have any questions.