[lug] Building software from source RPMs

[Bill Thoen]

I would like to recompile PHP for use with MySQL, but I've run into too 
many problems trying to recompile from the latest tarball (I'm using RH 
9, with an early apache 2, which PHPP 5 doesn't like.) So, I figured 
I'd just try the 4.2.2. source RPM.

It comes with a series of patch files, which I've never used before. I
assume I just unpack the source tarball under its /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES
directory and then apply the patches somehow, and then configure, make and
make install. But how do I apply these patches?

I've never tried an RPM source rebuild before either, so I'd appreciate 
any advice on that too.

TIA,
- Bill Thoen