Upgrading freeradius from source

I have done some testing on 2.1.4 and I like the flexibility comparing to 1.x. Unfortunately, I am using for production a pretty old distribution 1.1.7. For such an old distro, it's almost impossible to do an upgrade and still maintaining the rpm package info and what not, so I am considering upgrading by compiling from source, ie configure and make install. Any thing I should consider before I have go down to this path ? Cheers.