How to Install or Update autoconf and automake on RHEL/CentOS?

Question: I was installing ffmpeg with Yasm support, during which I need to use autoconf to generate configuration script on CentOS 6.6. Unfortunately, autoconf command failed with an error message Autoconf version 2.60 or higher is required. Below is the complete error message:

$ autoreconf -fiv
 autoreconf: Entering directory `.'
 autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Gettext
 autoreconf: running: aclocal --force -I m4
 m4/po.m4:20: error: Autoconf version 2.60 or higher is required
 m4/po.m4:20: the top level
 autom4te: /usr/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 63
 aclocal: autom4te failed with exit status: 63
 autoreconf: aclocal failed with exit status: 63

Solution:

As the error message says, I have to install higher version of autoconf. I tried yum update autoconf, but it responded as autoconf is already updated one (probably, I need to find a YUM repository that has latest autoconf). Anyways, I solved the issue by installing Autoconf 2.69 from source. Here’s what I did:

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

Check the version of autoconf:

$ autoconf --version
 autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.69
 Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Download and Install automake:

$ wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.14.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf automake-1.14.tar.gz
$ cd automake-1.14
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

$ which automake
 /usr/local/bin/automake

Check the version of automake:

$ automake --version
 automake (GNU automake) 1.9.6

That’s it.