[flashboot] Status of misc/patches

[farlies]

Curious about the status of the patches in the misc/patches
file. These seem incompatible with Current ldconfig.c:
several hunks fail; make build fails with partial patch installed.
The patches file seems identical in snapshot and alpha release.
Attempted to merge manually, but some incompatibilities, e.g.
semantics of '-S'.

* Are these patches important/necessary?
* If so, would one be advised to backtrack to stable?

Side question:
* Any way to resume a failed build that does not involve starting
 from scratch (~6 hours to get to the bug--is getting old :-)

// F