How odd! I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS at work and its X server reports support for 1.3.

 

Well, I think I see where the issue is. The code as written -- at least in that function -- assumes that if your libraries have the newer function, then your server supports it. That doesn't seem to be the case here.

In reading up on this today, I've already run across a few web pages showing which RandR requests were added in 1.3 and how to test the protocol version supported by the server. If you want to dig into X11 programming you're welcome to help out :-), otherwise I'll try to make some time this evening to look into coding the run-time protocol version checks.

In the meantime, if you want something that just runs without crashing this way, you could disable the use of the XRANDR extension. The configure script isn't set up to make that easy from the command line, but you could edit the config files generated. After running configure, look in src/config.h for the line:

... and comment it out. Then finish building Emacs normally. From a quick test on my system that seems to work okay, though I don't know off the top of my head what functionality might be diminished by losing the xrandr support.

Ken