NCBI-BLAST

https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?PAGE_TYPE=BlastDocs&DOC_TYPE=Download

Automatic Build

Inside ${HOME}/bioit/apps/ncbi-blast/SPEC there is a script called build. This just requires the version number and will download, compile, install and create the modulefile for you. Execute it as follows:

${HOME}/bioit/apps/ncbi-blast/SPEC/build 2.16.0+

When that completes check that the new version is available using:

module avail ncbi-blast

If that shows as being there you can test it works with:

module load ncbi-blast/2.16.0+
which blastp
blastp -h

If all is good, you can move to the RPM building step.

Manual Build

Download the x64-linux.tar.gz file into /opt/bioit/ncbi-blast/src and untar it. Note you can’t build from source without the Intel compiler so just use this which is a binary and also avoid the RPM because this way we can have multiple versions installed.

Move the unpackaged directory as follows:

mv ncbi-blast-2.16.0+ /opt/bioit/ncbi-blast/2.16.0+

That should do it.

Module setup

Add a module file in /opt/bioit/modulefiles/ncbi-blast/ for this version by copying previous ones and modifying the paths.

#%Module 1.0
#
#  ncbi-blast module for use with 'environment-modules' package:
#
prepend-path  PATH         /opt/bioit/ncbi-blast/2.16.0+/bin

RPM

There’s a SPEC file for this package in ${HOME}/bioit/apps/ncbi-blast/SPEC so modify that with the new version details found here. Once changed, build it with the following command:

rpmbuild -bb ncbi-blast.spec

This will create an installable RPM file which you can find in ${HOME}/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64 and just install that. It checks that the installation directory exists and will fail if it isn’t there.