yum

Default CentOS 5.2 yum repositories are still on Sybversion 1.4.x branch, so if you need the latest Subversion client, you are out of luck... or not, if you read this blog post :) This quick tutorial will show you how to upgrade in less than 5 minutes.

We will use RPMForge repos for the upgrade.

• Download and install proper RPMForge repo RPM for your server architecture (64bit or 32bit) from RPMForge website.
• Edit /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmforge.repo and change enabled=1 to "0". We do not want this repo to be enabled by default, because an accidental "svn update" will update all your packages to bleeding-edge, test-quality versions. RPMForge has many experimental rpms.
• Run: yum --enablerepo=rpmforge check-update subversion and make sure the version of subversion you are looking for is available. It should show you something like:
  

Yum is a standard installation utility for CentOS 5.2. One of the reasons I favor CentOS over other Linux distros is actually because it comes with yum. It is that good!

Unfortunately, CentOS 5.2 does not generally include the latest versions of libraries, because it follows conservative path of the RedHat Enterprise. Which is not that bad of an idea, for a server OS... until you need that latest version of something and you are stuck... or: not necessarily.

If you a are a Drupal developer, there's a very good reason why you need the latest version of PHP: 5.2. The reason is called FileField module. This module is required by another absolutely essential module ImageField making it a matter of life-or-death (just kidding) to have PHP 5.2 on your server. But the latest CentOS release (ironically also 5.2) only comes with PHP 5.1.6.

What to do?