I need to know if it is possible to compile the best and newest package in an old, ancient system. Why? Well I'm limited at my company: I need to develop an application in an old Debian 3.0 server and I would prefer to use newer software to accomplish my task. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to upgrade nor install any package.
Specifically, I want to parse XML files comfortably using xmlstarlet to do so. This server doesn't have it installed; if I download an older version of xmlstarlet supported by the system it's too old that I just lost the functionality I need. It just has three dependencies: libc6, libxml2 and libxslt1.1 (which are installed but are too ancient for a newer version of xmlstarlet)
So the question is: is there a way I can download this package and its dependencies (I think they are few and simple) and somehow compile them to work locally (not necessarily on the system's path, just in a working directory) without affecting in any way the legacy packages of the same name?
This system doesn't has PEAR either, nor PHP5, nor xmllint and I want to avoid coding in PHP4 to parse these XMLs. I really would like to work with xmlstarlet.
The answer to How to specify non-default shared-library path in GCC Linux? Getting "error while loading shared libraries" when running looks like it should work fine.
Or you could try static linking:
./configure --enable-static-libs