Re: [Open Babel] newbie questions

[Carsten N. <cni...@gm...>]

Moin Steve
 
> I have just installed Openbabel on Ubuntu Linux 9.04.  I am new to both
>  Linux and OB, and I was wondering:

<snip>

> How can I tell what version of OpenBabel I have installed?  Is there a
>  command I can run?

Open a shell and type "babel -v". The output should look like this:


carsten@linux-4637:~> babel -v
No output file or format spec!
Open Babel 2.2.2 -- Sep 24 2009 -- 09:54:44
Usage: babel [-i<input-type>] <name> [-o<output-type>] <name>
Try  -H option for more information.


> When a new version comes out, do I have to uninstall the old version before
>  installing the new one?  How DO I uninstall it if I decide to do that?

Ubuntu should take care of this. Depending which tool you use it is just the 
usual "update the system" command ("apt-get upgrade ; apt-get update" I think 
for Ubuntu on the shell). 
But distributions often don't update versions. So to get a more recent version 
you will have to update the whole disto (in your case the 9.10 version of 
Ubuntu once released), compile OB yourself or use an extra-repository that may 
or may not exist for Ubuntu (I am not using Ubuntu so I am not sure if there 
is one for OpenBabel).
The usual update-mechanism will give you bugfixes or perhaps improved packages 
(for example security issues or crashes fixed).
 
Carsten