unfortunately this update comes real late for f12 so it will have to wait till final release.
However there are builds available if you would like to test them:

https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=137453
https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=137350

xastir-1.9.6-1.fc11 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 11.
http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/xastir-1.9.6-1.fc11

xastir-1.9.6-1.fc11 has been pushed to the Fedora 11 testing repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
 If you want to test the update, you can install it with 
 su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update xastir'.  You can provide feedback for this update here: http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F11/FEDORA-2009-10831

Created attachment 366364 [details]
patch to find /usr/include/libgeotiff/xtiffio.h

Created attachment 366365 [details]
patch to bring SPEC up to 1.9.6 release

You'll want to see if I did this right, but at least 1.9.6 builds clean.  Please consider integrating this spec file with the xastir.spec.in in the xastir src.

D'oh, I should have read down the comments.  It looks like I just submitted duplicate work.  I guess it was in FC11 but not in FC12 rawhide?

xastir-1.9.6-3.fc12 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 12.
http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/xastir-1.9.6-3.fc12

xastir-1.9.6-3.fc12 has been pushed to the Fedora 12 testing repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
 If you want to test the update, you can install it with 
 su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update xastir'.  You can provide feedback for this update here: http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F12/FEDORA-2009-11151

xastir-1.9.6-1.fc11 has been pushed to the Fedora 11 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

xastir-1.9.6-3.fc12 has been pushed to the Fedora 12 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.