lvm2's patch file is pretty big.  it contains changes which:

1.  make glibc optional.  lvm2 as written assumes glibc's memory functions are
available.  the patch makes a couple changes which check if glibc is available
before relying on these functions.  it also makes some changes to the default
configuration to support this change.

2.  cleans up the std{out,err,in} stream redirection, replacing "fopen" with
"freopen" to first make sure the requested stream is closed before taking
ownership.

3.  replaces calls to "fmt" with "tr" in the makefiles.  fmt is part of gnu's
coreutils and is not present in sbase.  tr is present in both.  lvm2's makefiles
use fmt to turn a "horizontal list" into a vertical list.  it replaces runs of
whitespace in a stream with newlines, in other words.  tr can do this too, and
it is more portable.

4. removes the -p flag from the "install" invocations.  sbase's install doesn't
support that flag, and it's not clear why it needs to be set anyway.