Building and Installing X11R6.5.1 Kaleb S. KEITHLEY August 20, 2000 Copyright (C) 1999,2000 Compaq Computer Corporation Copyright (C) 1999,2000 Hewlett-Packard Company Copyright (C) 1999,2000 IBM Corporation Copyright (C) 1999,2000 Hummingbird Communications Ltd. Copyright (C) 1999,2000 Silicon Graphics, Inc. Copyright (C) 1999,2000 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Copyright (C) 1999,2000 The Open Group Copyright (C) 1998 The Open Group Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Soft- ware"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, provided that the above copyright notice(s) and this permission notice appear in all copies of the Soft- ware and that both the above copyright notice(s) and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABIL- ITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR HOLDERS INCLUDED IN THIS NOTICE BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, OR ANY SPECIAL INDIRECT OR CONSE- QUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFOR- MANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. Except as contained in this notice, the name of a copyright holder shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization of the copyright holder. X Window System is a trademark of The Open Group. 1. Introduction This document is the installation notes that were provided with X.Org's X11R6.5.1 release. If you're building XFree86, it can be used as a rough guide. Be aware that most of the details are not targetted specifically at the current XFree86 source tree. XFree86-specific docu- mentation can be found in the xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc direc- tory and on-line at http://www.xfree86.org/current/. Some of the docu- mentation there is out of date, so also be aware of that. There is cur- rently no up to date document specifically targetted at building XFree86 from source. 2. Easy Build Instructions This quick summary is no substitute for reading the full build instruc- tions later in this document. Edit xc/config/cf/site.def for local preferences. If you want to install somewhere other than /usr/X11R6.5.1, change ProjectRoot. (Do not use DESTDIR.) If you want to build with gcc uncomment the HasGcc2 line. If you have gcc, but not cc, please read the full build instructions. If some time has elapsed since the initial release of R6.5.1, check to see if any public patches have been released. The source tar files may have been updated -- check the patch-level line in the bug-report tem- plate. If the source in the tar files has not been updated then get all the patches and apply them, following the instructions at the top of each patch. Ignore the rebuild steps in the patch application instruc- tions. Check the appropriate vendor-specific .cf file in xc/config/cf/ to make sure that OSMajorVersion, OSMinorVersion, and OSTeenyVersion are set correctly for your system. On most systems imake will figure these out automatically; but you may override them in your xc/config/cf/site.def if you want. See if there is a BootstrapCFlags mentioned in the comments in the ven- dor-specific .cf file. (Most systems don't have or need one. The Boot- strapCFlags in sun.cf is for SunOS 4.0.x, so if you're building on SunOS 4.1.x or SunOS 5/Solaris 2 then BootstrapCFlags doesn't apply.) If there isn't one, cd to the xc directory and type (in csh): % make World >& world.log If there is an applicable BootstrapCFlags, take its value and type: % make World BOOTSTRAPCFLAGS="value" >& world.log Do not call the output file "make.log" when doing "make World". After a successful build, you can install with: % make install >& install.log You can install manual pages with: % make install.man >& man.log While the system is building (or if things fail), read the rest of these installation instructions. 3. Building and Installing R6.5.1 Historically the MIT X Consortium and The X Consortium, Inc., sample implementation releases have always been source-code-only releases, and this release is no different. 3.1. Introduction Every release of X has been progressively easier to configure, build, and install than the preceding releases -- and we believe this release is the easiest release to build yet. That not withstanding, if things do go amiss during the build we assume that you have the basic skills nec- essary, and the willingness, to debug any errors that may occur in the build process. When you install, if you're going to use xdm or replace your system's old X, we assume you have a basic understanding of your system's initialization process. For Remote Execution (RX, embedding) we assume you that you understand the fundamentals of HTTP, CGI, and HTML. If these assumptions are not correct then you should consider finding someone who has proficiency in these areas to do the build and install for you. After the release has been out for a while more up to date information about any newly-discovered problems may be found in the Frequently Asked Questions posting appearing monthly on the Usenet newsgroup comp.win- dows.x and xpert mailing list. The FAQ is also available via anonymous FTP from ftp://ftp.x.org/ in the file ftp://ftp.x.org/con- trib/faqs/FAQ.Z, or possibly on one of X mirror sites. 3.2. Preparing Your Build System The source is distributed in four gzip compressed UNIX Tape ARchive (tar) files. You will need about 200 Mb of disk space in order to unpack and build the release. Installing requires an additional 30-50 Mb assum- ing you have shared libraries (80-100 Mb without). On non-UNIX systems you'll need a utility that can extract gzip com- pressed tar files to extract the sources. There are several to chose from, we do not make recommendations about which one you should use. Release 6.5.1 sources are distributed among the tar files as follows: xorg-1.tar contains everything in xc/ that isn't in the other tar files xorg-2.tar contains xc/fonts xorg-3.tar contains xc/doc/specs, xc/util xorg-4.tar contains xc/doc/hardcopy If you define BuildFonts to NO in your site.def file, then you only need to unpack xorg-1.tar to build. If you build fonts, then you will also need xorg-2.tar to build. If you already have the fonts from prior releases you can use those instead of downloading them again. We presume that you know how to copy or move them from your old source tree to the R6.5.1 source tree. 3.3. Unpacking the Distribution Create a directory to hold the sources and cd into it: % mkdir sourcedir % cd sourcedir Then for each tar file xorg-*.tar.gz, execute this: % gunzip -c ftp-dir/xorg-N.tar.gz | tar xf - or if you have GNU's tar (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, or Linux too) % tar xzf ftp-dir/xorg-N.tar.gz 3.4. Applying Patches If some time has elapsed since the initial release of R6.5.1, check to see if any public patches have been released. The source tar files may have been updated -- check the patch-level line in the bug-report tem- plate. If the source in the tar files has not been updated then get all the patches and apply them, following the instructions at the top of each patch. Ignore the rebuild steps in the patch application instruc- tions. See the section "Public Patches" later in this document. Then continue here. 3.5. Configuration Parameters (Imake Variables) This release, like all the releases before it, uses imake, a utility for creating system-specific Makefiles from system-independent Imakefiles. Almost every directory in the release contains an Imakefile. System-spe- cific configuration information is located in xc/config/cf/, which is used by the imake program every time a Makefile is generated in the source tree. Most of the configuration work prior to building the release is to set parameters (imake variables) so that imake will generate correct Make- files. If you're building on one of the supported systems almost no con- figuration work should be necessary. You should define your configuration parameters in xc/con- fig/cf/site.def. We provide an empty site.def file and a site.sample file. The site.sample file is a suggested site.def file -- use it at your own risk. Any public patches we release will never patch site.def, so you can be assured that applying a public-patch will not corrupt your site.def file. On rare occasion you may need to make the change in your vendor- specific .cf file; but you should avoid doing that if at all possible because any patch we might release could conceivably patch your vendor- specific .cf file and your change may be lost or garbled. You can over- ride most of the things in your vendor-specific .cf file in your site.def file. (If you can't, it's a bug -- please file a bug-report.) On the systems we use here, imake will automatically determine the OSMa- jorVersion, OSMinorVersion, and OSTeenyVersion for your system. If your system isn't one of the systems we build on here, or you want to build for a different version of your operating system, then you can override them in the appropriate entry in your site.def file. The site.def file has two parts, one protected with "#ifdef BeforeVen- dorCF" and one with "#ifdef AfterVendorCF". The file is actually pro- cessed twice, once before the .cf file and once after. About the only thing you need to set in the "before" section is HasGcc2; just about everything else can be set in the "after" section. The site.sample also has commented out support to include another file, host.def. This scheme may be useful if you want to set most parameters site-wide, but some parameters vary from machine to machine. If you use a symbolic link tree, you can share site.def across all machines, and give each machine its own copy of host.def. The config parameters are listed in xc/config/cf/README, but here are some of the new or more common parameters that you may wish to set in your xc/config/cf/site.def. ProjectRoot The destination where X will be installed. This variable needs to be set before you build, as some programs that read files at run- time have the installation directory compiled in to them. HasVarDirectory Set to NO if your system doesn't have /var or you don't want cer- tain files to be installed in VarDirectory. VarDirectory The location of site editable configuration and run-time files. Many sites prefer to install their X binaries on read-only media -- either a disk slice (partition) that's mounted read-only for added security, an NFS volume mounted read-only for security and/or improved VM paging characteristics, or from a live filesystem on a CD-ROM. In order to simplify things like installing app-default files for locally built software, and allowing editing of miscella- neous configuration and policy files, and to allow xdm to create its master Xauthority file, some directories under $Project- Root/lib/X11 are actually installed in /var/X11, and $Project- Root/lib/X11 contains symlinks to the directories in /var/X11. HasGcc2 Set to YES to build with gcc version 2.x instead of your system's default compiler. BuildXInputExt Set to YES to build the X Input Extension. This extension requires device-dependent support in the X server, which exists only in Xhp and XF86_* in the sample implementation. DefaultUsrBin This is a directory where programs will be found even if PATH is not set in the environment. It is independent of ProjectRoot and defaults to /usr/bin. It is used, for example, when connecting from a remote system via rsh. The rstart program installs its server in this directory. InstallServerSetUID Some systems require the X server to run as root to access the devices it needs. If you are on such a system and will not be using xdm, you may set this variable to YES to install the X server setuid to root; however the X Project Team strongly recommends that you not install your server suid-root, but that you use xdm instead. Talk to your system manager before setting this variable to YES. InstallXdmConfig By default set to NO, which suppresses installing xdm config files over existing ones. Leave it set to NO if your site has customized the files in $ProjectRoot/lib/X11/xdm, as many sites do. If you don't install the new files, merge any changes present in the new files. MotifBC Causes Xlib and Xt to work around some bugs in older versions of Motif. Set to YES only if you will be linking with Motif version 1.1.1, 1.1.2, or 1.1.3. GetValuesBC Setting this variable to YES allows illegal XtGetValues requests with NULL ArgVal to usually succeed, as R5 did. Some applications erroneously rely on this behavior. Support for this will be removed in a future release. The following vendor-specific .cf files are in the release but have not been tested recently and hence probably need changes to work: apollo.cf, bsd.cf, convex.cf, DGUX.cf, luna.cf, macII.cf, Mips.cf, moto.cf, Oki.cf, pegasus.cf, x386.cf. Amoeba.cf is known to require additional patches. The file xc/lib/Xdmcp/Wraphelp.c, for XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1, is not included in this release. See ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/R6.5.1/xdm- auth/README. 3.6. System Build Notes This section contains hints on building X with specific compilers and operating systems. If the build isn't finding things right, make sure you are using a com- piler for your operating system. For example, a pre-compiled gcc for a different OS (e.g. as a cross-compiler) will not have right symbols defined, so imake will not work correctly. 3.6.1. gcc X will not compile on some systems with gcc version 2.5, 2.5.1, or 2.5.2 because of an incorrect declaration of memmove() in a gcc fixed include file. If you are using a gcc version prior to 2.7 on Solaris x86, you need to specify BOOTSTRAPCFLAGS="-Dsun" in the "make World" command. If you're building on a system that has an unbundled compiler, e.g. Solaris 2.x, and you do not have the cc compiler, you need to contrive to have cc in your path in order to bootstrap imake. One way to do this is to create a symlink cc that points to gcc. % cd /usr/local/bin; ln -s path-to-gcc cc Once imake has been built all the Makefiles created with it will explic- itly use gcc and you can remove the symlink. Another way around this is to edit xc/config/imake/Makefile.ini to specify gcc instead of cc. 3.6.2. Other GNU tools Use of the GNU BinUtils assembler, as, and linker, ld, is not supported -- period! If you have them installed on your system you must rename or remove them for the duration of the R6.5.1 build. (You can restore them afterwards.) The system-supplied make works just fine for building R6.5.1 and that's what we suggest you use. If you've replaced your system's make with GNU make then we recommend that you restore the system make for the duration of your R6.5.1 build. After R6.5.1 is done building you can revert to GNU make. GNU make on most systems (except Linux, where it is the default make) is not a supported build configuration. GNU make may work for you, and if it does, great; but if it doesn't we do not consider it a bug in R6.5.1. If, after this admonition, you still use GNU make and your build fails, reread the above, and retry the build with the sys- tem's make before you file a bug-report. 3.6.3. IBM AIX 4.x On AIX 4.x, the file lib/font/Type1/objects.c must be compiled without optimization (-O) or the X server and fontserver will exit when Type 1 fonts are used. 3.6.4. SunOS 4.0.x SunOS 4.0 and earlier need BOOTSTRAPCFLAGS=-DNOSTDHDRS because it does not have unistd.h and stdlib.h. Do not supply a BOOTSTRAPCFLAGS when building any SunOS 4.1 or 5.x (Solaris 2) version. 3.6.5. Linux On Linux systems imake has preliminary support to automatically deter- mine which Linux distribution you're using. At this time it only auto- matically detects S.u.S.E. Linux. On other Linux systems you should set the LinuxDistribution parameter in your xc/config/cf/site.def -- see the xc/config/cf/linux.cf file for the list of valid values. On Linux sys- tems imake will also automatically determine which version of libc and binutils your system has. You may override these in your xc/con- fig/cf/site.def file. Many distributions of Linux have poor or no support for ANSI/POSIX/ISO C locale support. If your Linux distribution is one of these you should make certain that the imake variable LinuxLocaleDefines is set to -DX_LOCALE so that compose processing and other internationalization features will work correctly. To help decide if you should use -DX_LOCALE, look in /usr/share/locale -- if it's empty, you should prob- ably use the -DX_LOCALE define. 3.6.6. Microsoft Windows NT All of the base libraries are supported, including multi-threading in Xlib and Xt, but some of the more complicated applications, specifically xterm and xdm, are not supported. There are also some other rough edges in the implementation, such as lack of support for non-socket file descriptors as Xt alternate inputs and not using the registry for configurable parameters like the system filenames and search paths. The Xnest server has been made to run on NT; although it still requires a real X server for output still. A real X server can not be built from these sources -- in order to display X applications on a MS-Windows host you will have to acquire a real X Server. You have several choices for imake's RmTreeCmd. Look at the possible definitions in the xc/config/cf/Win32.cf file, choose one that's right for you, and add it to your xc/config/cf/site.def file. 3.7. The Build For all the supported UNIX and UNIX-like systems you can simply type (in csh): % make World >& world.log You can call the output file something other than "world.log"; but don't call it "make.log" because files with this name are automatically deleted during the initial "cleaning" stage of the build. The build can take several hours on older systems, and may take as lit- tle as an hour on the faster systems that are available today. On UNIX and UNIX-like systems you may want to run it in the background and keep a watch on the output. For example: % make World >& world.log & % tail -f world.log If something goes wrong, the easiest thing is to correct the problem and start over again, i.e. typing "make World". 3.7.1. UNIX and UNIX-like systems Check your vendor-specific .cf file; if it doesn't have BootstrapCFlags that apply to your version of the operating system then type (in csh): % make World >& world.log Otherwise type (in csh): % make World BOOTSTRAPCFLAGS="value" >& world.log None of the supported operating systems need to use BOOTSTRAPCFLAGS. 3.7.2. Microsoft Windows NT On NT, make certain your Path, Include, and Lib environment variables are set accordingly. For example here we use the command line compiler in VC++ 4.0 Standard Edition, which is installed in C:\MSDEVSTD. To setup the environment type: > set Path=old-path;C:\MSDEVSTD\bin;C:\path-to-RmTreeCmd > set Include=C:\MSDEVSTD\include > set Lib=C:\MSDEVSTD\lib Then to build, at the prompt, type: C:\> nmake World.Win32 > world.log 3.8. Installing X After the build has successfully completed you can install the software by typing the following as root: % make install >& install.log or on Microsoft Windows NT C:\> nmake install > install.log Again, you might want to run this in the background and use tail to watch the progress. You can install the manual pages by typing the following as root: % make install.man >& man.log 3.9. Shared Libraries The version number of some of the the shared libraries has been changed. On SunOS 4, which supports minor version numbers for shared libraries, programs linked with the R6.5.1 libraries will use the new libraries with no special action required. On most other modern operating systems the version portion of the library name, i.e. "6.1" portion of "libX11.so.6.1" is a string. Even if it's only one character long, e.g. "1" (as in libX11.so.1) it's still a string. This string uniquely identifies and distinguishes one version of the library from another. Even though all the libraries in this release are compatible with the libraries from previous releases, and there's otherwise no reason to change the version string, we do it to identify which source release the libraries were built from. An old program that was linked with libXext.so.6.3 won't run if you delete libXext.so.6.3 and install libXext.so.6.4 in its place. In gen- eral on these systems you have the following choices: 1. Keep the old versions of the libraries around. 2. Relink all applications with the new libraries. 3. Create a symlink using the old name which points to the new name. For example, to have programs that were linked against libX- ext.so.6.3 use libXext.so.6.4, make this symlink: % cd $ProjectRoot/lib % ln -s libXext.so.6.4 libXext.so.6.3 On some distributions of Linux the run-time loader is broken -- requir- ing that the library's internal SONAME match the filename -- and the symlink solution won't work. We recommend that you get a new run-time loader which is not broken or recompile your run-time loader to not require that the SONAME match. 3.10. Setting Up xterm If your /etc/termcap and /usr/lib/terminfo databases do not have correct entries for xterm, use the sample entries provided in the directory xc/programs/xterm/. System V users may need to compile and install the terminfo entry with the tic utility. Since each xterm will need a separate pseudoterminal, you need a reason- able number of them for normal execution. You probably will want at least 32 on a small, multiuser system. On most systems, each pty has two devices, a master and a slave, which are usually named /dev/tty[pqrstu][0-f] and /dev/pty[pqrstu][0-f]. If you don't have at least the "p" and "q" sets configured (try typing "ls /dev/?ty??"), you should have your system administrator add them. This is commonly done by running the MAKEDEV script in the /dev directory with appropriate arguments. 3.11. Starting Servers Automatically at System Boot The xfs and xdm programs are designed to be run automatically at system startup. Please read the manual pages for details on setting up configu- ration files; reasonable sample files are in xc/programs/xdm/config/ and xc/programs/xfs/. Since xfs can serve fonts over the network, you do not need to run a font server on every machine with an X display. You should start xfs before xdm, since xdm may start an X server which is a client of (depen- dent on) the font server. 3.11.1. On BSD-based systems using /etc/rc or /etc/rc.local If your system uses an /etc/rc or /etc/rc.local file at boot time, you can usually enable these programs by placing the following at or near the end of the file: if [ -f $ProjectRoot/bin/xfs ]; then $ProjectRoot/bin/xfs & echo -n ' xfs' fi if [ -f $ProjectRoot/bin/xdm ]; then $ProjectRoot/bin/xdm; echo -n ' xdm' fi On later versions of FreeBSD the preferred way of doing this is to cre- ate the directory $ProjectRoot/etc/rc.d. Add this directory to the local_startup variable defined in /etc/rc.conf, and then create short scripts in this directory to start xfs and xdm. If you are unsure about how system boot works, or if your system does not use /etc/rc, consult your system administrator for help. 3.11.2. On Linux systems Most Linux distributions have an /etc/inittab entry specifically for xdm. Depending on your distribution this may be run-level three, four, or five. To use xdm, edit /etc/inittab and find the line which contains initdefault and change it from 2 to the appropriate run-level You Linux distribution may already have a script to start xdm at a par- ticular run-level. For example on S.u.S.E. Linux 5.0 there is the file /sbin/init.d/xdm, and the symlink /sbin/init.d/rc3.d/S30xdm which points to /sbin/init.d/xdm. Change /sbin/init.d/xdm to use $Project- Root/bin/xdm. You can use the xdm script as a model write an xfs script. Depending on your Linux distribution you may find these files in /etc/init.d instead of /sbin/init.d. 3.11.3. On Digital Unix, HPUX 10, and SVR4 systems Most systems run xdm by default at some particular run-level of the sys- tem. There is a master init.d file and a run-level symlink rc?.d that points to the master init.d file: Operating System rc?.d symlink init.d file Digital Unix 4.0 /sbin/rc3.d/S95xlogin /sbin/init.d/xlogin HPUX 10.20 /sbin/rc3.d/S800xdm /sbin/init.d/xdm Solaris 2.[0-4] Solaris 2.5 /etc/rc3.d/S99xdm /etc/init.d/xdm.rc Solaris 2.6 /etc/rc2.d/S99dtlogin /etc/init.d/dtlogin IRIX 6.2 /etc/rc2.d/S98xdm /etc/init.d/xdm Unixware /etc/rc2.d/S69xdm /etc/init.d/xdm In general you can edit the init.d file to use $ProjectRoot/bin/xdm. You can use the xdm file as a model to write an /etc/rc?.d/S??xfs file to start xfs. Some systems may already have files to start xfs. Starting in Solaris 2.5 Sun uses inetd to start xfs -- you should remove the xfs entries from /etc/inetd.conf and /etc/services before adding xfs to the run-level files. 3.11.4. On SystemV-based systems On systems with a /etc/inittab file, you can edit this file to add the lines xfs:3:once:$ProjectRoot/bin/xfs xdm:3:once:$ProjectRoot/bin/xdm 3.12. Using OPEN LOOK applications You can use the X11R6.x Xsun server with OPEN LOOK applications; but you must pass the -swapLkeys flag to the server on startup, or the OPEN LOOK Undo, Copy, Paste, Find, and Cut keys may not work correctly. For exam- ple, to run Sun's OpenWindows 3.3 desktop environment with an X11R6 server, use the command: % openwin -server $ProjectRoot/bin/Xsun -swapLkeys The keysyms reported by keys on the numeric keypad have also changed since X11R5; if you find that OpenWindows applications do not respond to keypad keys and cursor control keys when using an R6 server, you can remap the keypad to generate R5 style keysyms using the following xmodmap commands: keysym Pause = F21 keysym Print = F22 keysym Break = F23 keysym KP_Equal = F24 keysym KP_Divide = F25 keysym KP_Multiply = F26 keysym KP_Home = F27 keysym KP_Up = Up keysym KP_Prior = F29 keysym KP_Left = Left keycode 100 = F31 keysym KP_Right = Right keysym KP_End = F33 keysym KP_Down = Down keysym KP_Next = F35 keysym KP_Insert = Insert keysym KP_Delete = Delete 3.13. Rebuilding after Patches Eventually you are going to make changes to the sources, for example by applying any public patches that may be released or to fix any bugs you may have found. If only source files are changed, rebuild by going to the base of your source tree xc and typing: % make >& make.log If there are imake configuration file changes, the best thing to do is type: % make Everything >& every.log "Everything" is similar to "World" in that it rebuilds every Makefile, but unlike "World" it does not delete the existing objects, libraries, and executables, and only rebuilds what is out of date. 3.14. Formatting the Documentation The PostScript files in xc/doc/hardcopy can be generated from the sources in xc/doc/specs. Most of the documentation is in troff using the -ms macros. The easiest way to format it is to use the Imakefiles pro- vided. Set the name of your local troff program by setting the variable Trof- fCmd in xc/config/cf/site.def. Then build the Makefiles: cd xc/doc make SUBDIRS=specs Makefiles Finally, go to the directory you are interested in and type "make" there. This command will generate .PS files. You can also generate text files by specifying the document name with a .txt extension as a make target, e.g., "make icccm.txt". 4. Public Patches The Open Group X Project Team may from time to time issue public patches for this release to fix any serious problems that are discovered. Such fixes are a subset of fixes available to X Project Team members. Public patches are available via anonymous FTP from ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/R6.5.1/fixes, or from your local X mirror site. Check the site closest to you first. You can determine which public patches have already been applied to your source tree by examining the "VERSION" line of xc/bug-report. The source in the tar files you have may already have some patches applied; you only need to apply later patches. If you try to apply patches out of order or apply patches that are already in your tree, patch will tell you that you have the wrong version and not apply the patch. Source for the patch program is in xc/util/patch/. The patch program included on some systems may not support all the options this version has. If you have problems applying patches, or if you're otherwise in doubt, use this version.