Thanks to the advice received from others I have been able to modify some of the packages to suit my requirements such as enabling printing in Gimp, Leafpad and running a network enabled build of hplip.
I noticed that the recent updates do not provide those additional features for obvious reasons.
The question is how can I keep up to date with the upgrades and also keep my local modifications enabled at the same time.
I recall mojo asking me to clone the wok but does that mean I need to rebuild the packages with the options I am currently using each time when a new upgrade is made available?
Currently, I have simply blocked off those packages from upgrading but it would be nice to have the latest versions with my modifications, ideally without having to rebuild.