If you are on Windows 32-bit, and are willing to use the MinGW compiler, then everything you need to know is on my web page. Everything, from scratch. All instructions. All links. Successful builds. Verified by others. Last successful build of 2.9 was five days ago, right after bug fix 685445 in Git code.
http://robertallgeyer.com/content/speci ... p-2.9.htmlAs for Linux (the original question in this thread): I have successfully built 2.9 on Ubuntu and openSUSE. The last build for those was in early October (I'll try again in the near future). With Ubuntu, the then-dev 12.10 release was needed, as 12.04 didn't have enough support without grabbing lots of backports. For openSUSE, 12.2 with rolling updates did the job. Complicated hacks were not necessary.
Edit: Git code from October 27, 2012 builds and launches on Windows32/MinGW and on openSUSE. Didn't try Ubuntu yet.