One of the patches was for the configure script: added a
#define timezonevar before the
#include <time.h>. I had a reference for this (presumably by Corinna) but I'm unable to google it right now.
If that isn't adequate, I recall doing a
TIMEZONE=PST8PDT then an
export TIMEZONE, maybe that was required. Oh, and make sure that the
tzcode package is installed (I might've added that later; I don't know if it's
really required).
In other news, I tried setting the serial port rate via stty, but
there's an outstanding bug in it. I'm going to try to write an app that sets the port rate using gpsd's serial.c - I know it at least partly works because it set the port rate for my COM1 to 4800 from its Windows default of 9600 - hey, there's a thought, I should just set the port rate in Device Manager and see if it takes... (one minute later) YES!!!!! SWEET!!!!!! Ok, that's some code I don't need to write. I can now say that this works with at least one USB-based GPS device (Holux adapter on GPSlim236/GR-236, using Prolific Technology's ser2pl.sys).
Still hoping someone has something like /usr/bin/play...