Or consider compiling it yourself from source. It may be more work, but you get complete control over your versioning, your package dependencies, etc. If a bug that affects you gets fixed on a bleeding edge version (or is only available as a patch), you can fix it right away rather than waiting for the package maintainer to catch up to it.
Or just ping me in #ghettoforge on Freenode and I'll generally get it fixed quickly, if I haven't already seen it on the list and fixed it.
Not all package maintainers are as responsive as you are. I've lost count of the number of problems reported here, where people could not move from version 1.x, because their repo did not have anything newer, or for reason out of their control, they can't update because it would/could break something else.
There are downsides to compiling yourself.
To be sure. (Incidentally, auto-updates are sometimes *not* what people want -- stability of a working system is paramount over anything that might jeopardize that.)
Compiling from source is not everybody's cup of tea, but it does allow complete control over the build. Repo-packages usually are built with kitchen-sink options, which may not suit everyone.
Joseph Tam <jtam.home@gmail.com>