Guidance for running XSLT distribution build, for local development

Hello! I'm working on a new output format that I would like to offer as a contribution (if my skills are up to the task). I want to build the XSL distribution from my fork of the repository
 so I can test my changes. I haven't worked with DocBook distribution 
builds in the past, and I think I'm missing some important context.

It
 looks like CI will build release distributions in the DocBook organization. I don't think that covers my fork of the repo though. Is 
that something I could turn on in my forked repository configuration?

I also thought it might be easier to build locally using make. I tried building on my MacOS laptop using the instructions in the xsl10-stylesheets repository.
 That didn't work, because of invalid paths to the expected Ubuntu file 
system. I'm considering running an Ubuntu 14.04 virtual machine to 
replicate the expected build environment. Or maybe edit the .xmlc file 
paths?

Thanks for your patience with my beginner build questions! Has anyone run a build to generate a release distribution lately? Can you share how you did that?

Peter