SPUG:Compiling source of a package: How To?

[Joe Devlin]

I am trying to install a perl module XML::LibXML which requires the
the updated version of libxml2.

I tried to update to the latestest version with the 'rpm -U' command.

so tried this:
    rpm -U
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/rawhide/1.0/i386/RedHat/RPMS/libxml2-2.5.7-3.i386.rpm

and found
    error: failed dependencies:
        libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.3)   is needed by libxml2-2.5.7-3
        libpthread.so.0(GLIBC_2.3.2)   is needed by libxml2-2.5.7-3
        libxml2 = 2.4.23 is needed by libxml2-devel-2.4.23-91

I googled for error messages like this and found that I should try compiling
the source.

so I made a wild guess and tried this:
   rpm -bb
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/rawhide/1.0/SRPMS/SRPMS/libxml2-2.5.7-3.src.rpm

and got the response:
   File
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/rawhide/1.0/SRPMS/SRPMS/libxml2-2.5.7-3.src.rpm does
   not appear to be a specfile.

My question is, how do I compile the source for libxml2
(for that matter, any package)?

Joe Devlin

-------------------------------------------------------