CHANGELOG.rst

SeqAn Changelog

This file summarizes the changes to the SeqAn library and apps.

Release 2.5.0

This release aims to add support for interoperability with SeqAn3 and newer C++ standards (17, 20, 23). Release 2.5.0 might work with older compilers, but there is no support.

Library Features

• Namespace:

  • The namespace was changed from seqan to seqan2 to allow for interoperability with other SeqAn libraries.

• Sequence I/O:

  • Accepting files that end in .fas.

• Indexing:

  • Improved search schemes for 3 and 4 errors in seqan2::bi_fm_index.

Selected Bug Fixes

• VCF I/O:

  • Accessing the const reference of a seqan2::VcfIOContext via seqan2::context now works correctly.

• Indexing:

  • horspool: If the text is smaller than the query, abort the search.

App Updates

• Yara:

  • Fixed verification of N's for seeds and boundary checking for anchors (restores full-sensitivity)
  • Removed option --all (was deprecated)
  • Added option to compute and output alignments for secondary matches
  • Added option to specify strata threshold as absolute number of errors

• Mason:

  • genome: Use larger integers for contigLenghts.
  • simulator: Now uses the command line parameter for seeding instead of the default.

Build System

• The minimum CMake version requirement was raised to 3.12.

Platform Support

• Compiler support:

  • GCC 11, 12, 13
  • Clang 15, 16, 17
  • Intel oneAPI C++ Compiler 2024.0.2 (IntelLLVM)
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 17
  • Other compilers might work, but are not tested.

Release 2.4.0

Library Features

• Align

  • Generic parallelisation and vectorisation.
  • Support for SSE4, AVX2 and AVX512.
  • Speed-Ups of > 1000x compared to serial execution of long DNA alignments.

• Indexing

  • Parallel find() interface
  • Support for optimal search schemes (https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.02035)

• ReducedAminoAcid

  • several new Reduced Amino Acid alphabets are now available.

• VCF I/O

  • Now supports version 4.2 of the specification, i.e. columns with only eight fields.

Selected Bug Fixes

• BAM I/O

  • Fix of jumpToRegion() functionality to start at the desired region instead of the index block.
  • Works correctly on big endian platforms now.

• Translation

  • Handle empty/too-short input correctly.

• Code Cleanup

  • various parts of the codebase have undergone cleanup and may now report deprecated functionality as being deprecated via compiler-functionality.

Platform Support

• Compiler support:

  • Satisfies stricter warning levels of GCC-8, Clang-5 also with -std=c++17.
  • Supports VS2017.
  • Intel Compiler suite 2016 was dropped.
  • Intel Compiler suites 2017 and 2018 are newly supported.
  • GCC-4.9 on MacOS was dropped (newer GCC available everywhere via MacPorts or Homebrew).
  • Clang-3.5 on FreeBSD was dropped (newer Clang available in base system and Ports).

• CPU architectures support:

  • Substantial fixes for big endian platforms

  • Now officially supported and passing integration tests:

    • i386, amd64/intel64, x32, ia64
    • armel, armhf, arm64
    • mips, mipsel, mips64el
    • powerpc, ppc64, ppc64el
    • s390x, alpha, m68k, sh4

  • Officially not supported: sparc64
  • Thanks to the Debian Med team for their patches!

• Upstream packages:

  • SeqAn2 packages are finally coming to Fedora, thanks to @sagitter
  • Package updates in Debian, Ubuntu, MacPorts, Homebrew and FreeBSD expected shortly.

Release 2.3.2

Selected Bug Fixes

• Argument parser

  • various fixes in the version checker
  • fix incompatibilities in CTD file creation with KNIME (introduced in 2.3.0)

• Build systems

  • reintroduce FindSeqAn.cmake for projects that rely on cmake's module mode
  • fix the pkgconfig file

• Platform related

  • improved compliance with warning levels of soon-to-be-released gcc7 and clang4
  • because of unresolved bugs we now recommend gcc5 as minimum gcc version when using static linking

Release 2.3.1

Selected Bug Fixes

• Argument parser

  • bool option negative values
  • improve and fix version check

Release 2.3.0

Library Features

• Argument Parser:

  • Adds version check support to the argument parser.

    • Check for new updates of a specific application.
    • Check for new versions of the library.
    • This option is opt-out by default but can be switched to opt-in or completely disabled via compiler flags and the SeqAn build system.

  • Altered Argument Parsers help page to display argument information.
  • Extended Argument types by bool, input_directory and output_directory.
  • Display file extensions that contain numbers.

• Sequence I/O:

  • New support for RNA structure files

    • Supported formats: Vienna (.dbv), Dot-Bracket-Notation (.dbn), Stockholm (.sth), Connect (.ct), Bpseq (.bpseq), Extended Bpseq (.ebpseq)
    • Input/output of whole files or of a single record/header

  • Added function isOpen() for formatted files.
  • Enabling assignment of format tags that differ from underlying format.
  • It is now possible to treat a BAM file as a (compressed) sequence file and read the sequences as if they were FastQ.

• Blast I/O:

  • Added support for handling the Q_ACC, S_ACC, S_ALLACC, S_TAX_IDS fields
  • Added non standard fields LCA_ID and LCA_TAX_ID for lowest common ancestor information
  • Moved some redundant data from matches into record objects

• FM Index:

  • Added documentation for the bidirectional FM index
  • Reduced size of constant-time FM index

• Graphs:

  • Added new function getVertexAdjacencyVector()

Selected Bug Fixes

• Sequences:

  • Initialize empty CStyle Strings properly.
  • Fixed length function for const Dependent-StringSet

• Graphs:

  • Reimplemented DFS in a non-recursive fashion to avoid stack overflow.
  • Multiple Sequence Alignment: Fix getAlignmentStatistics() on empty matches string.

• Alignments:

  • Banded Chain Alignment: check for possible score overflow.

• GFF / GTF:

  • Fixed I/O compatibility

    • Ignoring additional space
    • Allowing records to have multiple parents

• BAM I/O:

  • Parsing the header for SO tags

• VCF I/O:

  • Fixed reading of contig names in VCF header

• Indices:

  • Enforce Container-Types for find()

App Updates

• Gustaf:

  • Fixed name conflict (TANDEM)

Platform Support

• Compiler support:

  • SeqAn satisfies stricter warning levels of GCC7 and c++1z

• New operating systems supported:

  • (Debian) GNU/kFreeBSD and GNU/Hurd

• New CPU architectures supported:

  • arm and arm64, mips and mips64
  • powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64
  • and some others (all Debian platforms except sh4 and armel)

• Thanks to the Debian Med team for their patches

Infrastructure Updates

• Added feature to selectively deactive the build of individual apps
• Enforce using Python 2.x for documentation
• Improvements to CMake and PkgConfig files

Release 2.2.0

Library Features

• Indices:

  • FM index now has several options to reduce space consumption or improve running time

    • up to three level rank dictionaries
    • size of blocks on the lowest level (referred to as WORDS_PER_BLOCK)

  • Bidirectional FM index with constant running time using EPR-dictionaries
  • Please see the manual for more information

• Alignment:

  • Vectorized DP-Alignment algorithms using SSE3/AVX2. Allows for inter-parallel alignment computation in a many-vs-many or one-vs-many mode.
  • add a scoring matrix type that can be specified at runtime (e.g. BLOSSUM62, BLOSSUM50)

• Modifier:

  • ModifiedString ModPadding: Expand a string with padding symbols, without changing the source.

• Other:

  • Replace pthread implementation with STLs thread support library. Increases performance and fixes rare bugs in bam_io.

App Updates

• SAK (Swiss Army Knife):

  • fixed sequence filters.

• Yara:

  • verifying seeds
  • fixes CIGARs and secondary records.

Selected Bug Fixes

• Alignments:

  • fixes MyersHirschberg implementation.
  • accept '=' operations in CIGAR string

• Split Alignment:

  • computes correct trace from split position.
  • allows flexible free-end gaps configuration.

• close Fasta file after FAI-Index is built.
• fixes Character to AminoAcid conversion.
• remove temporary files created during tests on Windows.

Infrastructure Updates

• Build System:

  • The Intel Compiler is now fully supported on Linux and Windows, both 32bit and 64bit; it builds faster binaries and supports some functionality not available in MSVC.
  • On Windows there is now experimental support for Clang/C2, the Microsoft version of the clang compiler.
  • Please see the manual for more information on how to use these compilers.
  • support deb/rpm/exe/dmg packages and SSE4+POPCNT binaries

• Platforms:

  • full FreeBSD support
  • Ship UCRT, OPENMP and Intel DLLs for apps on windows
  • more apps available on Windows and some packaging fixes

Documentation Updates

• Api Docs:

  • Tree-View by Module

Release 2.1.1

Minor release including major improvements of the manual, several library bug-fixes and changes in the build system. All library modules are backward compatible with 2.1.0. For a complete list of changes visit GitHub.

Selected Bug Fixes

• Tests:

  • delete automatically created temp directories in unit and app tests
  • demo tests: std::cout was not considered in tests

App Updates

• Yara:

  • fall back to single-end mapping when paired-end library length distribution is neither given nor estimable
  • fixed handling of reference metagenomes (references larger than 16k sequences)
  • enabled support for reference metagenomes by default (-DYARA_LARGE_CONTIGS=ON)
  • added option --sensitivity (low, high, full)
  • replaced option --output-secondary with --secondary-alignments (tag, record, omit)
  • renamed several options

Documentation Updates

• Manual:

  • major reworking of the manual
  • repaired links to API dox
  • hourly update of API dox for nightly builds

Infrastructure Updates

• Build System:

  • more sensible execinfo detection
  • don't ship apps and the manual on library releases
  • introduce cmake -DSEQAN_OFFICIAL_PKGS=1 to build upstream releases with static binaries
  • cache dependency detection on DEVELOP
  • make it possible to do RELEASE_LIBRARY without dox

• Platforms:

  • basic BSD support
  • fixed warnings on Windows

• KNIME:

  • packaging - more flexibility when generating KNIME plugins of external apps

Release 2.1.0

Major release with many new features and applications. Except where noted below, this release is compatible to previous 2.x releases. For a complete list of changes visit GitHub.

Library Updates and Selected Bugfixes

• Apps:

  • Yara: fixed warnings, build errors and bugs, updated test files
  • Yara: new features (compute mapping qualities, estimate distribution of paired-end insert sizes)
  • Yara: follow SAM recommended practices for paired-end reads
  • T-Coffee: new feature deep coffee (aligning several hundred sequences)
  • Gustaf: introduced two phase breakpoint combination; updated readme and help messages
  • Removed old apps: Razers2, Flexbar and SeqCons in favor of newer releases

• Alignments:

  • added feature to count gaps to the left a of a position/iterator
  • disallow wrong use of scoring scheme for Hirschberg algorithm
  • extended AlignmentStats by number of gaps and length of the alignment
  • fixed evaluation of alignment
  • using gaps for integrateAlign and align_extend

• BLAST (new module):

  • E-Value statistics, including precomputed constants, bit-score and e-value calculation for alignments
  • support for reading and writing BLAST Tabular files (with and without comments)
  • support for writing BLAST Report files

• Indices:

  • added public function for trie and radix tree construction
  • Q-gram Index: allows sorting the hash-table according to the number of occurrences to reduce cache misses

• IO:

  • Tabix index: allowing range queries on chromosomal file formats such as VCF
  • Fai Index: optimized fasta index construction
  • BAM: added function to write tags from BamTagsDict to the tags field of a bam record
  • BAM: allowed BamTagsDict to take const CharStrings

• Misc:

  • fixed Iupac alphabet by replacing = by U
  • added missing O character to amino acid alphabet
  • Argument Parser: a few new features such as help string for advanced options
  • removed random number engine and replaced it by the STL one
  • ZipIterator & ZipContainerView: iterating simultaneously over multiple containers
  • extended edges in graphs to store a reference to its source

• Modifier:

  • ModifiedString ModPos: iterating over a sequence in a predefined order
  • overload save() of ModifiedStrings for const strings
  • fixed Modified Iterators and ModView

• Journaled String Tree (new module):

  • reference compressed string set structure
  • for more details see the publication

• STL containers:

  • added a completely new adaptation to SeqAn interfaces that supports all STL containers, also std::array and std::forward_list
  • greatly improved compatibility of SeqAn algorithms with STL containers so these can be used instead of SeqAn Strings

• Streams:

  • improved ZipStream

• Compatibility to previous versions

  • the random module was removed, please use the STL's random module instead
  • the StringSet<T, Dependent<Tight> > has been deprecated and will likely be removed for the next release
  • some SeqAn Macros have been deprecated since C++11 is now required, e.g. there is no SEQAN_AUTO_PTR_NAME, only unique_ptr<>
  • SEQAN_NAMESPACE_MAIN has been moved into the seqan namespace, so some of your Metafunction overrides may need to be adapted

Documentation Updates

• Dox:

  • added version selector in API dox

Infrastructure Updates

• Build System:

  • Major improvements to build system resulting in cleanup and dropped dependencies
  • C++11 is now required and many datatypes now have move cosntructors and -assignment operators
  • added support for new compiler versions, but dropped support for older compilers
  • requirements are now GCC ≥ 4.9 or LLVM / Clang ≥ 3.5 (for Linux, Mac OSX, FreeBSD) and Visual C++ ≥ 14.0 / Visual Studio ≥ 2015 (for Windows)

Release 2.0.2

Minor release including several library bug-fixes as well as better documentation and infrastructure. All library modules are backward compatible with 2.0.1. For a complete list of changes visit GitHub.

Selected Bug Fixes

• Sequences:

  • fixed insert() for packed_string
  • fixed segfault bug for upac assignment in Dna5 StringSet
  • added insertValue(), insert() and replace() for StringSets
  • added empty() for std::list

• IO:

  • BAM I/O: adding spport for custom tags with floats
  • BAM I/O: BamTagsDict allows wrapping a const object
  • FastQ: fixed readRecord() for malformed fastq files (avoid skipping records)
  • FaiIndex: fixed readSequence/readRegion allocation

• Apps:

  • Gustaf: loading Fasta files with Iupac characters

Documentation Updates

• Dox:

  • fixed page redirection
  • minor bugs
  • code snippets in the documentation now undergo build tests and continuous integration to avoid outdated documentation

Infrastructure Updates

• Platform Support:

  • FreeBSD support
  • updated prerequisites for GCC to >= 4.7 and Clang to >= 3.3
  • fixed warnings for gcc6
  • clang-3.7.x: deactivated openmp because of bug
  • fixed compiler-warnings in Visual Studio (/W2 produces no warnings anymore)
  • added support for Visual Studio 2014 and 2015

• Build System:

  • added pkg-config support
  • changed includes search priorities for CMake's FindSeqAn

• Continuous Integration:

  • added more platforms on TravisCI

Release 2.0.1

Minor release including several library bug-fixes as well as better documentation and infrastructure. All library modules are backward compatible with 2.0.0. For a complete list of changes visit GitHub.

Library Bug Fixes

• Basic:

  • Added AminoAcid symbol "O"
  • Disabled global exception handler by default

• Sequence:

  • Added missing overloads for const Strings
  • Fixed and tested StringSet
  • Reworked STL containers adaption
  • Fixed several bugs in ModifiedStrings and ModifiedIterators

• Stream:

  • Worked around I/O with std::string
  • Supported multi-stream gzip files produced by Illumina Casava
  • Fixed BgzfStream tell()

• SeqIO:

  • Changed Raw file extension from .txt to .raw

• BAM I/O:

  • Fixed BIN computation
  • Fixed a bug in jumpToOrphans()
  • Fixed internal concurrency problems
  • Fixed readBamHeader() to clear the BamHeader
  • Added assertions to writeRecord()
  • Added BamIndex::save() to save .bai files

• Gff I/O:

  • Fixed parsing of comment lines

• FragmentStore:

  • Fixed loading Gtf/Gff3 files

• Index:

  • Fixed open() and save() for WT FMIndex
  • Added open() and save() for OpenAddressing QGramIndex

• Seeds:

  • Fixed a bug in sparse chaining
  • Fixed a bug in banded chain alignment

Documentation Updates

• Manual:

  • Fixed and improved several Tutorials and HowTos
  • Added version-aware links to the dox

• Dox:

  • Added @datarace entity
  • Fixed broken links in "See Also" section
  • Fixed a problem with close button in the side pane
  • Documented class VirtualStream

• Demos:

  • Restructured demos directory
  • Fixed several broken demos

Infrastructure Updates

• Platform Support:

  • Added support for GCC 4.9 and Clang 3.7
  • Preliminary support for Clang 3.8 with OpenMP
  • Preliminary support for Visual Studio 2015
  • Preliminary support for FreeBSD 10.2

• Build System:

  • Tested all demos
  • Upgraged TravisCI builds to run on Docker
  • Fixed Java detection

Release 2.0.0

Major release with many new features and applications. Note, the majority of the modules are backward compatible to the previous version. Some modules, e.g. I/O-modules, have some adapted easier-to-use or unified interfaces.

Library Updates

• Faster and easier-to-use modules for basic and formatted file I/O:

  • stream
  • seq_io
  • bam_io
  • vcf_io
  • gff_io

• Faster data structures:

  • FMIndex (up to 4X).
  • Packed Strings.

• New alignment modules:

  • X-Drop extension for alignments (align_extend)
  • Sequence-profile alignments (align_profile)

• New AminoAcid-Dna translation module (translation)
• The motif finding module (find_module) has been removed.

Infrastructure Updates

• The repository has been migrated to GitHub (https://github.com/seqan/seqan).
• Continuous integration builds happen on TravisCI.
• The manual has been migrated to sphinx (https://seqan.readthedocs.io).
• The core and extras subfolders have been removed.

New Apps

• ANISE and BASIL

  • Methods for the detection and assembly of inserted sequence in High-Throughput Sequencing Data.

• BS Tools

  • Bisulfite read mapping and SNP and methylation level calling.

• Fiona

  • A parallel and automatic strategy for read error correction.

• Gustaf

  • Generic mUlti-SpliT Alignment Finder.

• Mason 2

  • A read simulator.

• NGS ROI

  • Region of Interest Analysis for NGS Data.

• Samcat

  • Concatenate and convert SAM/BAM files (faster than samtools).

• Seqcons 2

  • Compute consensus from sequences sequences with and without approximate alignment information.

• Yara

  • Yet another read aligner (replaces Masai).

Release 1.4.2

Documentation-only release backward compatible with 1.4.1.

Release 1.4.1

This minor release should be backward compatible with 1.4. It contains small fixes and many demos for improving the API documentation. Some file format functionality has been added.

Highlights

• Many new demos and improved API documentation throughout the library.
• New file format support and tutorials for this functionality: VCF I/O, BED I/O, and improvements to GFF and GTF I/O.

Selected Bug Fixes

• gff_io.h does not contain corrupt includes any more
• Gapped X-drop seed extension now works with score matrices such as BLOSUM60.
• SAM writer code now writes 255 for invalid MAPQ and 0 for invalid/unapplicable TLEN instead of *.
• Fix in Postorder ParentLinks VSTree Iterator.
• SEQAN_PATH_TO_ROOT() can now be used in demo programs.
• Removing duplicate definition of SEQAN_ENABLE_TESTING in build system.
• Write support for char * for BamTagsDict.
• Fix in StringEnumerator.
• Fix writing out of file extension when writing KNIME plugins.

Release 1.4

Highlights

• New read mappers applications Masai and RazerS 3.
• Extended and more robust I/O functionality in stream, seq_io, bam_io, and gff_io.

• Module arg_parse creates improved command line help and supports workflow engine integration.

  • Also see https://github.com/genericworkflownodes

• Greatly improved alignment module with better performance and interfaces.
• Greatly improved build system, find_package(SeqAn) for your CMake build systems.

New Apps

• ALF

  • Alignment free sequence comparison.

• Breakpoint Calculator

  • Breakpoint computation for genomic alignments.

• Masai

  • Fast index-based read mapper.

• RazerS 3

  • Fast filtration-based, parallel read mapper.

• SnpStore

  • SNP and small indel calling.

Major App Updates

• All applications now use the ArgumentParser and have better CLI help.

• Rabema

  • Rewritten from scratch, includes BAM support.
  • Greatly lowered memory requirements.

• SeqCons

  • Fixing input bugs, supports SAM I/O now.

• Stellar

  • Major update improving running time, including bug fixes, and allowing for various alphabet types.

• MicroRazerS

  • Adding support for SAM output.

Major Library Updates

• Modules seq_io, bam_io, gff_io with I/O functionality.
• FM Index in module index.
• Rewritten align module with better performance, more consistent interfaces.
• Split alignment module align_split.
• Metaprogramming: introducing EnableIf, DisableIf, EnableIf2, and DisableIf2 metafunctions
• Module alignment_free for alignment free sequence comparison.
• Module journaled_set for managing many similar sequences.
• Faster open addressing q-gram index.
• generic support for memory mapped files via FileMapping class
• Adding module parallel with atomic operations in C++98.
• Greatly improved FragmentStore documentation.
• Adding position(), operator-(), operator[] with proxy functionality and relation operators to journaled string iterator.
• Pigeonhole-based filter algorithm.
• Parallel repeat finding.
• Clang support, C++11 support

Major Library Bug Fixes

• Fixing repeat finding on Dna5Q.
• Fixing insert size computation in store_all.h
• Fixing memory initialization problem in appendValue() for Block String.
• Default constructor of Iter modified, such that data_container and data_position are initialized.
• Fixed error loading Fasta on Windows.
• Fixed wrong StringSet size types, allow to easily subclass Alloc strings
• Now supports SAM files with missing read sequences
• Fixing SeqAn code for C++11
• FragmentStore fixes.

Miscellaneous

• Experimental support added platforms for ICC and PGI compilers.
• Experimental support for CUDA.

• Build System

  • Large updates to build system.
  • Includes FindSeqAn.cmake for easily using SeqAn in your own CMake build system.
  • Packaging now based on CPack

• Xcode plugin for MacPorts LLVM/Clang in Xcode 3 and 4
• Improved code generator skel.py.
• Many minor bug fixes
• Cleaned code base
• Added test cases (e.g. Stellar)
• Improved documentation and added examples (Mason, Rabema, RazerS, etc.)
• Improving coding style compliance of Array String implementation.
• Various tool improvements (e.g. RazerS 3)
• Performance improvements.