Running newer versions of autoconf tools on CentOS 5

Today I had to compile a program that needed a newer version of the Autoconf suite than is available on CentOS 5. I got around this like so:

• Downloaded and rebuilt the SRPM for autoconf2.6 from the good folks at pkgs.org

• Installed it on the build machine (dang! shoulda been using Vagrant for that! Or least Mock...)

• This gives you /usr/bin/auto[whatever]2.6x -- which is good! don't overwrite stuff! But you'll still get complaints about not new enough versions.

• Symlink all the 2.6 binaries to ~/bin/:

for i in /usr/bin/auto*2.6x ; do

    ln -s $i ~/$(basename $i | sed -e's/2.6x//g')

done

• Modify PATH to have ~/bin first.

Walla.