Creating source tree for new project

[Eric Sandeen <sandeen io com>]

Ok, I finally decided to take the plunge.  I read up on GTK and Gnome
programming, read the code for a bunch of small applets, and decided to
try to create my very first Gnome applet.  I even went out and bought
Havoc's book. :-)

I decided that I want to do things right, and build a proper gnome
application source tree.  That's when I got depressed.  Even with
Havoc's book, I'm confused with where to start.  autoconf, automake, m4
macros, gettextize... am I going to have to learn all of this before I
can start?

I'm not an experienced programmer, but I can make do within an existing
framework of code.  I am quite new to the Linux programming environment,
which is probably why I feel overwhelmed by all of this.  So I guess my
question boils down to this -

Is there an easy way for John Q. Programmer to get a Gnome source tree
up and running, and get down to the business of programming, without
fully understanding all of the GNU build tools?  Or am I just going to
have to suffer through all of that before I can get to the fun stuff? 
:-)

Thanks,

-Eric