I was trying to compile Luminocity, and it was all going fine until I hit this:

checking for XSERVER... configure: error: Package requirements (randrproto renderproto fixesproto damageproto xextproto xfont xproto xtrans xau compositeproto resourceproto recordproto xdmcp xdmcp) were not met.

during the configuration of xserver. I don't understand what it wants, I can't find any packages named like these, so I'm a little stuck

I'm running Ubuntu 5.04 AMD64

Here's a simple example of building luminocity using jhbuild.
**Note the "jhbuild bootstrap" part, this is important.
First, check out and install jhbuild from GNOME CVS.

% cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome get jhbuild
...
% cd jhbuild/
% make
% make install

Then, copy luminocity.modules from this module into your
jhbuild/modulesets/ directory.

Next create a jhbuildrc file in your home directory. I called mine
~/.jhbuildrc-luminocity:

---- .jhbuildrc-luminocity ----
import os

moduleset = 'luminocity'
modules= [ 'luminocity' ]

cvsroot = ':ext:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome'
checkoutroot = '/home/jrb/src/luminocity/'
prefix = '/opt/luminocity'
autogenargs='--enable-maintainer-mode --disable-static'

os.environ['INSTALL'] = os.path.join(os.environ['HOME'], 'bin', 'install-check')
-------------------------------

You will need to modify 'cvsroot', 'checkoutroot' and 'prefix' as
appropriate.

Then run jhbuild to build luminocity. Unfortunately, X doesn't build
with automake-1.9 so we need to tell autoreconf to use automake-1.7.

% export AUTOMAKE=automake-1.7
% export ACLOCAL=aclocal-1.7
% jhbuild -f ~/.jhbuildrc-luminocity build xserver luminocity

To make sure you've got the right tools:
% jhbuild bootstrap

Once done, you'll need to get a shell with correct environment variables
setup by running:

% jhbuild -f ~/.jhbuildrc-luminocity shell

Then, you can run luminocity by doing:

% cd luminocity/src
% Xfake :1 -ac &
% DISPLAY=:1 xterm &
% luminocity :1

etc.:) :)