CentOS - Dec 2009 - proper protocol for installing a *really* new package?

what is the proper approach to install on centos 5.4 a package
that's newer than the currently supported one?  at the moment, AFAICT,
the latest "poppler-utils" package for centos is 0.5.4.  however, the
source is up to version 0.12:

  http://poppler.freedesktop.org/

which matches the current fedora version, but that's not surprising
since, naturally, fedora zips right along keeping up with that sort of
thing.

  however, i have a case where it's important that a newer version of
poppler-utils (and, consequently) poppler be installed on a centos 5.4
box.  someone has claimed he's done it by (gack!  choke!) installing
the fedora package.  that just creeps me out.  in any case, what would
be the proper solution under centos?  is there a "rawhide"/dev
equivalent for centos?  thanks.

rday
--

=======================================================================Robert P.
J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

            Linux Consulting, Training and Kernel Pedantry.

Web page:                                          http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
========================================================================

Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>
>    what is the proper approach to install on centos 5.4 a package
> that's newer than the currently supported one?  at the moment, AFAICT,
> the latest "poppler-utils" package for centos is 0.5.4.  however,
the
> source is up to version 0.12:
>
>    http://poppler.freedesktop.org/
>
> which matches the current fedora version, but that's not surprising
> since, naturally, fedora zips right along keeping up with that sort of
> thing.
>
>    however, i have a case where it's important that a newer version of
> poppler-utils (and, consequently) poppler be installed on a centos 5.4
> box.  someone has claimed he's done it by (gack!  choke!) installing
> the fedora package.  that just creeps me out.  in any case, what would
> be the proper solution under centos?  is there a "rawhide"/dev
> equivalent for centos?  thanks.
You could get an SRPM from fedora and tryo to "rpmbuild --rebuild" it.
Since poppler is a library, you may have to also rebuild any packages 
that depend on it (evince, poppler-utils and xfig on my system, maybe 
others on yours).
You should do this as non-root, check out the centos wiki and list 
archive for details on that.