133. Compiling Openbabel 2.3.1 and CMake on ROCKS/centos

Open Babel is a convenient tool for converting between chemistry-related file formats. Sadly, it's not included in ROCKS 5.4.3 from what I can see and I could only install a severely outdated rpm package which doesn't support gaussian 09 and nwchem well.

The easiest way to compile openbabel is by using cmake.

Cmake:
wget http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.8/cmake-2.8.8.tar.gz
tar -xvf cmake-2.8.8.tar.gz
cd cmake-2.8.8.8/
./configure --prefix=/home/me/.cmake
make
make install

Add the following to your ~/.bashrc and source it:
export PATH=$PATH:/home/me/.cmake/bin

Note: this works in Scientific Linux (Boron) 5.4 as well

Openbabel
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/openbabel/openbabel/2.3.1/openbabel-2.3.1.tar.gz?r=http%3A%2F%2Fopenbabel.org%2Fwiki%2FGet_Open_Babel&ts=1336048328&use_mirror=aarnet
tar -xvf openbabel-2.3.1.tar.gz
cd openbabel-2.3.1/
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/home/me/.babel
make
make install

Add the following to your ~/.bashrc and source it:
export PATH=$PATH:/home/me/.babel/bin

Note: this works in Scientific Linux (Boron) 5.4 as well

Do
babel -L formats 
to get a list of formats.