RDKit 2012.12 RPM packages

I just uploaded to my fedorapeople space RPM packages for RDKit newest release. These are for Fedora 18 and EPEL 6, 64 bit only. Just ping me if you need 32 bit or Fedora 17 builds.

PLEASE NOTE
This package is in the Fedora review queue since some time so if you are a packager please consider helping to finish the review. Of course I can review something for you in return.

How to fix SYSTEM WARNING: date() in the Mantis package

If your Mantis installation in Fedora gives this kind of warnings on page loads:

SYSTEM WARNING: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'Europe/Berlin' for 'CEST/2.0/DST' instead

the fix is easy, as the message suggest you need to add a call to date_default_timezone_set() somewhere in the code, with one of the PHP timezone codes as the argument.

But where exactly?

Right now, my suggestion is to use the file /etc/mantis/config_inc.php and add it as the last line in the file. This way, your modification will not be overwritten on the next update.

spec files e sorgenti

I files .spec contengono le istruzioni per creare i pacchetti RPM; al loro interno solitamente vengono usate delle "macro" in modo da semplificare la vita ai packager.
Ad esempio, il file buildbot.spec contiene:

Name: buildbot
Version: 0.7.6
Release: 2%{?dist}
Summary: Build/test automation system

Group: Development/Tools
License: GPLv2
URL: http://buildbot.net
Source0: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/%{name}/%{name}-%{version}.tar.gz
Patch0: %{name}-no-shebang.patch


Da notare come la riga Source0 (che identifica dove i sorgenti sono reperibili) usi le macro %{name} e %{version} che vengono poi espanse a "buildbot" e "0.7.6" rispettivamente.

Se uno si vuole scaricare i sorgenti, ovviamente può comporre il link facendo un po' di copia/incolla e sostituendo a mano le macro, ma ho sempre pensato ci dovesse essere un metodo più semplice... ed effettivamente c'è:

spectool -g buildbot.spec

rapido e pulito :)

Finally some LIBERATION for fonts?

One of the most annoying things on Linux was the default set of fonts. More specifically, there was nothing comparable with the usual (and ubiquitus) fonts found on Windows like Arial, Times New Roman, etc.
Web pages, documents from MS office and everything polluted with those fonts were not properly rendering in the Linux applications.

Now, Red Hat decided to do something to fix this and released a first version of a set of fonts with the same metric, so that a replacementis perfectly usable.

For more info on the press release

Update:
the package review request was just completed. Expect to find them with a "yum install liberation-fonts" real soon now