How to upgrade autoconf on CentOS

Last updated on June 18, 2020 by Dan Nanni

Question: I am trying to use autoconf to generate a configuration file on CentOS. However, it fails with the following error.

configure.ac:1: error: Autoconf version 2.69 or higher is required

Apparently, the default autoconf on CentOS is not meet the requirement. How can I upgrade autoconf on CentOS?

autoconf is a development tool used to generate automatically a platform-dependent configure script for compiling and installing software on UNIX/Linux platforms. autoconf is typically used with automake and libtool to minimize the efforts to build and package software for a target architecture.

To upgrade the default autoconf on CentOS, you can build the latest autoconf from its source. Here is the instruction on building and installing autoconf from its source.

$ wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.69.tar.gz
$ tar xvfvz autoconf-2.69.tar.gz
$ cd autoconf-2.69
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

After installation, verify autoconf version:

$ autoconf --version

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