As you follow the various sections in the book, you will observe that the book includes various patches that are required for a successful and secure installation of the packages. The general policy of the book is to include patches that fall in one of the following criteria: Fixes a compilation problem. Fixes a security problem. Fixes a broken functionality. In short, the book only includes patches that are either Required or Recommended. There is a Patches subproject which hosts various patches (including the patches included in the books) to enable you to configure your LFS the way you like it:)