How to update a base package from source

[snarfer]

I am running Fedora 7 on MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, in order for my system to work properly I need to install newer versions of certain packages than are available in the repositories. Specifically, I need to update to:

wpa_supplicant-0.5.8
madwifi-0.9.3.3 (from SVN)
gphoto2-2.4.0
libgphoto2-2.4.0

I have already compiled and installed these packages from source. and everything is fine with them, except that Fedora doesn´t know they are installed. And yum keeps trying to install older versions. And there are lots of other packages that are dependent on them.

One idea I had would be build rpms from the source and install that way. But I can´t seem to find the proper spec files.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

[brunson]

First, check the development repos for the versions you need (I doubt you'll find CVS versions of anything build, though). If that doesn't pan out, get the source rpms for the current versions, install them, then use the spec files in them as a starting point for building your own rpm. If that's too much work, then read the yum documentation on how to list packages to exclude from updates in your yum.conf.