sysdeputil.c:162: error: expected declaration specifiers or ‘…’ before ‘capset’

I have no freaking clue what I am doing. So be careful just following this blindly.
When I initially googled for this issue I did not find this specific solution:

When tried to install vsftpd.2.0.7 from source on a centos 5.2 64 bit machine I get the error:

sysdeputil.c:162: error: expected declaration specifiers or '...' before 'capset'


yum install libcap-devel.x86_64


At which point the linker complained:

/lib/libcap.so.1: could not read symbols: File in wrong format


I had to actually commend out the line

locate_library /lib/libcap.so.1 && echo "/lib/libcap.so.1";


in vsf_findlibs.sh. After that it compiled and seemed work.