!! Uhh, the code is public now? Oh, dear. :P OK, I thought I'd have another day or so to write docs... Guess I'll get started on that next. Haha

In the meantime... Thanks so much for writing this up, Phil! :D Some comments on your steps:

1. Yes, indeed, the submodules are all-important and nothing will work without them. If you attempt to run cmake before fetching submodules, you'll see errors like "XYZ directory does not contain a CMakeLists.txt" or errors mentioning "GetGitRevisionDescription". If you see errors like this, make sure you fetched your submodules. You can fetch all the code, submodules included, in a single command with:
   git clone https://github.com/eosio/eos --recursive

2. I'm not testing things on Mac, and people who do haven't touched the code since the conference, so YMMV with XCode. :P Fwiw, I usually use -G Ninja but Makefiles should work just fine too (and are supported, so if they don't, let me know)!

3. Yes, unfortunately our P2P code still uses a bunch of tech that hasn't been updated in too long, and for now we have to use OpenSSL 1.0.2... Replacing the P2P code is a priority for me personally, but it's also quite a bit of work. :P

4. The branch called "refactor" that was splattered with "[INCOMPLETE] [NO BUILD]" warnings was indeed more recent code, but not actually intended to be used quite yet, so much as looked at to give an idea of where I was going on my recent refactoring adventure. :P

5. Hopefully as of last night, that branch is building and more or less working again, so I'll merge it back in soon.

Of course I'll write up some proper build docs showing how to get some nodes up and running and making blocks, but this comment made a nice warm-up round. :D