Patches are later corrections made to the source code after the public release announcement. As a rule, they are initiated by user feedback; their aim is to fix an installation problem concerning a particular platform or compiler version.

Patches are to be applied to the previously downloaded and unpacked full source distribution. Documentation patches can be applied to the binary (pre-compiled) distributions too.

1. Uncompress the patch file(s) if needed:

       bunzip2 polymake-VERSION-patchNN.bz2

2. Change into the top directory of the unpacked source distribution, restore it to the initial state:

       cd polymake-VERSION
       make distclean

3. Call the patch utility for each patch relevant for you:

       patch -p0 < DOWNLOAD_DIR/polymake-VERSION-patchNN

   The patches do not depend on each other unless stated explicitly; you can safely skip the patches fixing the problems you don't expect to encounter. Each patch can be applied only once; multiple attempts to apply the same patch will be rejected by the patch utility.
   Check the system requirements and proceed with the configuration and build steps as described in the installation instructions.