[CentOS] proper protocol for installing a *really* new package?

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.