How to compile ready to deploy latest version of `poppler-utils` for Amazon Linux

I have a server running on AWS Linux. The application uses poppler-utils.

The server is CI integrated. So all the necessary dependencies are installed before the application is deployed. One of the dependencies is poppler-utils.

Till now I had been installing it using $ yum install poppler-utils. Recently I realized that the version on Amazon Linux repo hasn't been updated for ages (0.26.5 vs latest on ubuntu is 20.08 - 6 years of version difference).

I can of course build and install (using make and make install on source) on a single machine. For CI/CD purposes I need something that is fast to install and deploy (yum packages work great for this).

How can I get ready to deploy recent version of poppler-utils?

Few Ideas I have explored:

1. Try installing from another repo (non amazon linux) that has a recent version of poppler-utils.
2. Build a rpm file myself. Never built one myself so the task looks daunting.

Looking for some direction on which path to pursue.

Based on the comments.

The solution proposed was to build custom AMI:

You can launch an instance from an existing AMI, customize the instance (for example, install software on the instance), and then save this updated configuration as a custom AMI. Instances launched from this new custom AMI include the customizations that you made when you created the AMI.

Thus the AMI was creating with current version of poppler-utils, which ensures that any instance launched from the AMI will have up-to-date poppler.