Ubuntu Build Instructions
From Apache OpenOffice Wiki
Ubuntu
To build you need the following packages:
sudo apt-get install g++ gcc bison flex libarchive-zip-perl libcups2-dev libpam0g-dev \ gperf libfreetype6-dev libxaw7-dev libfontconfig1-dev libxrandr-dev patch \ libgconf2-dev libgnomevfs2-dev ant libgtk2.0-dev junit junit4
The java package depends on your Ubuntu version.
For 9.10 Karmic Koala and Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx you must activate the "ubuntu lucid partner" archive in the software sources and run
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk
For 11.04 run
sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk
To make sure that all packages are installed you could just simply run command:
sudo apt-get build-dep openoffice.org
Then you can build OOo with
./configure --disable-mozilla --with-junit="/usr/share/java/junit4.jar"
For other options regarding mozilla code please see here.
In case you want to get some libraries from the system instead of building them yourself, the following packages are candidates to be installed also:
sudo apt-get install python-dev ccache libgraphite-dev \ libwpd8-dev libxslt-dev libdb4.7-dev libneon27-dev libhunspell-dev libaltlinuxhyph-dev
Then follow the Building Guide to continue.