# =========================================================================== # # PUBLIC DOMAIN NOTICE # National Center for Biotechnology Information # # This software/database is a "United States Government Work" under the # terms of the United States Copyright Act. It was written as part of # the author's official duties as a United States Government employee and # thus cannot be copyrighted. This software/database is freely available # to the public for use. The National Library of Medicine and the U.S. # Government have not placed any restriction on its use or reproduction. # # Although all reasonable efforts have been taken to ensure the accuracy # and reliability of the software and data, the NLM and the U.S. # Government do not and cannot warrant the performance or results that # may be obtained by using this software or data. The NLM and the U.S. # Government disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including # warranties of performance, merchantability or fitness for any particular # purpose. # # Please cite the author in any work or product based on this material. # # =========================================================================== The NCBI SRA Software Development Kit Contact: sra@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 3.0.1 November 15, 2022 bam-load: distributing bam-load for Mac stopped bam-load: reference resolution honors more the configuration information fasterq-dump: having the same sequence in the sequence-table as well as in the alignment table is tolerated now fasterq-dump: includes accession in help-text now kfg: fixed a bug that caused override of user configuration kfg, sra-tools: removed interactive requirement to configure SRA Toolkit kfs: fixed bug with long paths kns, sra-tools: allow to use AWS data with compute environment via proxy latf-load: fixed a bug causing a potential freeze on reaching a maximum number of errors ref-variation: added libraries and tools: ngs-vdb, general-writer, ref-variation, sra-search, general-loader, pileup-stats sam-dump: missing quality score printed as * sam-dump: new option to output '*' for quality scores SharQ: supports nanopore FASTQ format sra-pileup, vfs: fixed crash when working with no-quality run sra-stat: prints detailed information for detected mismatch of recorded and calculated statistics sra-tools, vdb: retired vdb-get sra-tools, vfs: fixed infinite loop when resolving some accessions test: stopped distribution of Makefiles for NGS C++ examples vdb: updated zlib version to fix vulnerability NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 3.0.0 February 10, 2022 blast: BLAST tools are now distributed by Blast team build, ngs, sra-tools: ngs project has been moved to sra-tools fasterq-dump: fails if stdout requested, but there are multiple output streams fasterq-dump, fastq-dump, sratools: fixed a bug that caused multiple accession to cause the tool to exit with an error fasterq-dump: fixed problem where files could be deleted if output directory was a symlink fasterq-dump: now with pre-flight mode fasterq-dump, vfs: fixed a warning message when processing prefetched protected run fastq-dump: create correct name when processing protected run latf-load: added support for interleaved file I/O latf-load: added support for long barcodes with '+' in them latf-load: updated spot assembly for reads with # style barcodes latf-load: updated spot assembly to pair /1 and /2 reads latf-load: will no longer accept duplicate read names ngs: clients will not download dynamic libraries anymore prefetch: fixed checking of dependencies for absolute path prefetch, vdb: fixed to downloads reference sequences into "Accession-Directory" when zero-quality is preferred remote-fuser: was retired sratools: seq-defline and qual-defline options work correctly sratools: tries harder to find the executable path on macOS vdb-decrypt: remove "_dbGaP" suffix when decrypting protected run vdb-dump: exits with non-zero return code when reference sequences are not found kfs, sra-tools: fixed a bug in handling of long URLs on Windows NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.11.3 October 25, 2021 fasterq-dump, sratools: fasta and fasta-unsorted parameters work correctly NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.11.2 October 7, 2021 fasterq-dump: added flexible defline, fasta-unsorted, only-aligned, only-unaligned fasterq-dump: new output format available: --fasta fasterq-dump: option -t sets directory of all temp files (including VDB cache) klib, ngs-tools, sra-tools: status messages (-v) are printed to stderr rather than stdout kns, ngs-tools, sra-tools: old verbose messages now happen at verbosity > 1 ncbi-vdb, ngs-tools, sra-tools, vdb, vfs: added support of SRA Lite files with simplified base quality scores prefetch, vfs: fixed a problem that prevented downloading of files named with special characters sam-dump: fixed wrong value for SAM RNEXT field for unaligned records sra-tools, sratools: verbose option displays information about the type of quality scores contained in the files being used sratools: temporarily changes quality score preference when quality scores are not being used sra-tools, vdb: environment variable NCBI_TMP_CACHE sets the caching directory, overriding any other setting vdb-dump: --info produces valid JSON NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.11.1 August 17, 2021 align, axf, sra-pileup, vdb, vfs: resolve reference sequences within output directory cloud, kns, sra-tools: fixed problems with compute environment prefetch: better control of reference sequences prefetch: fixed failure when protected repository exists prefetch: fixed infinite loop prefetch, vdb, vfs: prefetch with "-O" will now correctly place references in output directory prefetch, vfs: fixed error message 'multiple response SRR URLs for the same service...' when downloading prefetch: will download any missed dependencies vdb-dump: using --info with URLs now works correctly NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.11.0 March 15, 2021 fasterq-dump: does not exit with 0 any more if the given path/accession is not found fasterq-dump: does not exit with 0 if accession is not found fasterq-dump: does not fail when requested to dump a run file with non-standard name fasterq-dump: available on Windows kfg, prefetch, vfs: resolve WGS reference sequences into "Accession Directory" kfg, sra-tools, vfs: dropped support of protected repositories kns, sra-tools: fixed work via proxy ncbi-vdb, ngs, ngs-tools, sra-tools, vdb: added support for 64-bit ARM (AArch64, Apple Silicon) prefetch, vfs: fixed download of protected non-run files prefetch, vfs: fixed segfault during download of JWT cart prefetch, vfs: respect requested version when downloading WGS files sra-pileup: now silent if requested slice has no alignments or reference-name does not exist sratools: added description and documentation of the sratools driver tool to GitHub wiki sratools: disable-multithreading option removed from help text for tools that do not support it sratools: does not access remote repository when it is disabled sra-tools, vfs: recognize sra file names with version vdb-dump: exits with no-zero value if asked for non existing column NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.10.9 December 16, 2020 align, vdb: fixed situation where network access could drastically slow down reading references fasterq-dump: better recognizes pacbio-runs fasterq-dump: ignore .sra-extension of input-filename in output-filename fasterq-dump: non-zero return-code if no arguments given fastq-dump: fasta parameter will complain about invalid argument kar: added availability to open remote files on cloud kns, sra-tools, vdb: added a loop to retry failed connections when fetching SRA files latf-load: added an option to drop read names (--no-readnames), preserve them by default prefetch: support of ETL - BQS (synthesized quality) runs sra-docker: documentation for toolkit docker sratools: driver tool passes all arguments to the driven tool sratools: fixed bug that prevented the `concatenate-reads` option from working sratools: fixed typo `split-e` for option `split-3` sratools: tools can be executed with no arguments sratools: transport option is now deprecated and silently ignored sratools: verbosity argument is passed on to driven tool vdb-config: added a new option to force use of full qualities vfs: allow to find local files when remote repository is disabled vfs: call SDL service when resolving runs and reference sequences NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.10.8 June 25, 2020 kdbmeta: allow to work with remote runs prefetch: print error message when cannot resolve reference sequence vfs, prefetch: download encrypted phenotype files with encrypted extension kdb, vdb, vfs, sra-tools: fixed bug preventing use of path to directory created by prefetch if it ends with '/' kproc, fasterq-dump: fixed problem with seg-faults caused by too small stack used by threads vfs, sra-tools, ngs-tools: report an error when file was encrypted for a different ngc file NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.10.8 June 24, 2020 sratools, sra-tools: fixed issue with some runs not working correctly and fixed typo in fasterq-dump command line NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.10.7 May 22, 2020 sratools, sra-tools: fixed issue with some runs not working correctly and fixed typo in fasterq-dump command line kns, ngs-tools, sra-tools: added new header to HTTP requests to communicate VDB version NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.10.6 May 15, 2020 align, sra-tools: fixed fetching of reference sequences from cloud align, sra-tools, vfs: fixed resolving of hs37d5 reference sequence build, sra-tools: installation script works when libmagic is not present kar: errors fixed in kar utility kfg, sra-tools: ignore configuration with invalid protected user repository kns, sra-tools: fixed error message when accessing GCP files kns, sra-tools: increased tolerance to network timeouts krypto, sra-tools, vfs: fixed decryption bug prefetch: allow to resume interrupted download, validate downloaded file sratools: sra-tools are now available on Windows sratools, vdb-dump, vfs: fixed vdb-dump sra-tools, vdb: improved caching of WGS reference sequences sra-tools, vfs: fixed use of WGS reference sequences NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.10.5 April 1, 2020 prefetch: improvements were made to work in environments with bad network connections. prefetch, sratools: fixed the names of the --min-size and --max-size command line arguments when running prefetch NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.10.4 February 26, 2020 kns, ngs-tools, sra-tools: fixed errors when using ngc file NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.10.3 February 13, 2020 sraxf, sam-dump, fasterq-dump, fastq-dump: fixed a problem resulting in a segmentation fault NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.10.2 January 15, 2020 cloud, kfg, vdb-config: added command line options for cloud configuration fasterq-dump: fixed bug of random error at startup kfg, kns, krypto, prefetch, vdb-config, vfs: names service URL was updated to locate.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov kfg, prefetch, vfs: fixed possibility to prefetch karts with genotype and phenotype files latf-load: latf-load now preserves read names prefetch, vfs: allow to specify file type to prefetch prefetch, vfs: allow to use "prefetch --type all" to request download of all file types prefetch: accepts JWT cart command line argument prefetch: accepts JWT cart command line argument plus accession filter prefetch: fixed crash when run with --output-file option prefetch: make sure to accept old style kart file; added --cart command line option prefetch: the download transport has been limited to https and the eliminate-quals option has been temporarily disabled sra-pileup: printing bases inbetween slices when user-defined ref-name given fixed sra-stat: can accept any number of reads srapath: fixed regression when an extra vdbcache URL is printed srapath: fixed regression when resolving protected data sratools, vdb-config: dbGaP page removed sratools: add --perm option to all accessor tools sratools: added --ngc command line argument sratools: fastq-dump accepts both -v and --verbose to enable verbose mode sratools: sratools accept --ngc to specify the ngc file sratools: sratools accepts -Z for fasterq-dump sratools: sratools was rewritten as a stand-alone binary vdb, vdb-config: GUID shown in vdb-config or created if not yet present vdb, vdb-dump: fixed an error reporting bug vdb-config: allow multiple saves in interactive mode vdb-config: disabled possibility to import ngc file vdb-config: fixed bug in file-select-dialog vdb-config: wording of public user-repository changed to just user-repository vdb-dump, vfs: addressed obscure bug preventing access to a single external reference vdb-dump: fixed bug in -X ( hex ) mode NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.10.0 August 19, 2019 bam-load: SAM/BAM record sizes are limited only by available memory fastq-dump: fixed help text kfg, sra-tools: use trace.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov to call names service kfg, vdb-config: alternative remote repository URL was added to default configuration kfs: introduced readahead strategy for cloud storage klib, vdb: error report is saved to ncbi_error_report.txt kns: We now use system root CA certs on Unix kns: introduced configurable controls over network timeouts prefetch, srapath: support for original submission files in cloud storage prefetch, srapath, vfs: added possibility to specify data location prefetch, vdb: adjustments for latest name resolution service prefetch, vfs: added support of "run accession as directory" prefetch, vfs: added support of download of reference sequences in "run accession as directory" prefetch, vfs: fixed regression when prefetch does not download vdbcache prefetch: fixed crash when run with --output-file option prefetch: updated prefetch help text sra-stat: don't print mismatch warning for old runs having a single SEQUENCE table and CMP_BASE_COUNT=BIO_BASE_COUNT while it should be 0 sra-stat: fixed a bug when processing runs having spots with first reads with length 0 srapath, sratools: Added support of "run accession as directory" sratools: SRA tools are executed by a driver tool called sratools sratools: installation creates symlinks to invoke some tools via a driver tool (sratools) tui, vdb-config: new look and cloud specific options in 'vdb-config -i' vdb-validate: referential integrity checker prints out completion message, if it printed out any progress NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.9.6-1 May 7, 2019 prefetch: rolled back to version 2.9.3 to fix regression that prevented download of vdbcache files NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.9.6 March 18, 2019 prefetch, vfs: fixed regression that prevented re-download of incomplete files NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.9.5 March 6, 2019 prefetch: fixed regression that caused download of incomplete files NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.9.4-2 March 6, 2019 prefetch: rolled back to version 2.9.3 to fix regression that caused download of incomplete files NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.9.4-1 March 4, 2019 sra-tools, vfs: fixed regression causing delay when starting sra tools NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.9.4 January 31, 2019 fasterq-dump: improved handling of temp files in case of multiple instances fasterq-dump: produces same output as fastq-dump on SRR000001 (empty reads) fastq-dump: updated typo in error report ngs, ngs-tools: dump-ref-fasta: added an option to skip non-local references read-filter-redact: Fixed to update HISTORY metadata sra-tools, vfs: added support of realign objects NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.9.2 July 23, 2018 kfg, vfs: introduced enhanced handling of download-only NGC files that lack read/decrypt permissions NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.9.1-1 June 27, 2018 prefetch: restored download of dependencies when running "prefetch 'local file'" NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.9.1 June 18, 2018 fasterq-dump: a tool to dump a whole run in fastq by using a simple query engine approach kar: Reduced memory consumption for extract operations kfg, vfs: Fixed a bug that prevented decryption of objects encrypted with non-UTF8 text password keys kns: Randomly select from multiple proxies in configuration ngs-tools: all tools now report their version correctly prefetch: allows user to specify output file or directory prefetch: fixed leaking of file descriptors during ascp download prefetch: now supports download from URL prefetch: relays error messages generated by ascp and prints them to prefetch error log. NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.9.0 February 23, 2018 align: AlignAccessRefSeqEnumeratorNext no longer filters by the index align: fixed a bug which caused sam-dump to quit with an error under certain conditions bam-load, sra-stat: Updated sra-stat to extract statistics of alterations made by loaders for inclusion in its report bam-load: an issue with accessing WGS accessions was fixed bam-load: bam-load will generate an error and quit when too many spots have been encountered fastq-dump, vdb: Fixed crashing of fastq-dump when dumping multiple runs with -split-3 option specified fastq-dump: minor change to help text fastq-load: preserves spot names when the platform is Illumina kfg, prefetch, remote-fuser, vfs: Updated resolving of cache location of non-accession objects kfg, prefetch: set limit of Aspera usage to 450m kns: Accept the same http_proxy specifications as wget kns: Added possibility to report server's IP address after network error kns: added mechanism for enabling mbedtls internal logging to reveal more information about failures kns: fixed a case where an invalid error message resulted from dropped connection latf-load: now processing multi-line sequences and qualities latf-load: pacbio spot names with a range are now processed correctly ncbi-vdb: fixed bug of directory not found on mac ngs-tools: Added optional dependency on 'sra-tools' needed for some tests ngs-tools: Created a tool to compute coverage for contigs ngs-tools: added build instructions pileup-stats: pileup-stats now exits with code 3 if called without arguments prefetch: fixed a bug in prefech when it printed invalid error messages after failure of reading from server sra-search: added option --fasta for output in FASTA format sra-search: added option to display version number sra-search: added option to search unaligned and partially aligned fragments only sra-search: improved performance in reference-driven mode sra-search: various efficiency/readability improvements in the code sra-sort: Created a separate version of sra-sort for Complete Genomics sra-sort: Fixed race condition in sra-sort when result was not completed when using fast drives sra-stat: Added calculation of N50, L50, N90, L90 statistics sra-stat: Fixed: sra-stat prints the path of alignment reference when the path is remote (http) sra-stat: Improved performance when calculating bases statistics sra-stat: The maximum number of reads that can be processed was Increased to 4K. sra-tools, vdb: access to vdb/ngs via SQLite srapath: srapath allows to get results of name resolver CGI vdb-config: vdb-config does not fail when /repository/user/default-path is not set in configuration vdb-validate: added a check of sum(READ_LEN) against length(READ) vdb: An error caused by a rare condition was fixed NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.8.2-1 March 14, 2017 vdb-config: fixed regression: vdb-config exited with error when there was no user default path in configuration NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.8.2 March 6, 2017 blast, build: removed library dependencies that were preventing users from launching these tools blast, sra-tools: Prepared completely static build of blast tools for windows with HTTPS support build, ncbi-vdb, sra-tools: installation will back up old configuration files if they differ from the ones being installed build: created sra-toolkit Debian package kfs, vdb: Fixes errors occuring when configuration is missing klib: Fixed logging error reported as "log failure: RC(rcText,rcString,rcConverting,rcBuffer,rcInsufficient)" kns: SRA tools respect standard set of environment variables for proxy specification kns: updated mbedtls library to version 2.4.1 ncbi-vdb: configure in detects existence of ngs jar file ngs, sra-search: now supports search on reference ngs-tools: updated the NCBI download page to incorporate ngs versions into 3rd party package names prefetch: Fixed error message "path excessive while opening directory" when prefetch is trying to get vdbcache prefetch: Fixed regression in prefetch-2.8.1 when downloading dbGaP files via HTTP prefetch: Fixed regression in prefetch-2.8.1 when downloading vdbcache files from dbGaP via HTTP sam-dump: consistency of sam-dump in fastq-mod improved sam-dump: consistency of sam-dump in fastq-mode improved sra-stat: sra-stat does XML-escaping when printing spot-groups test-sra: extended test-sra to debug user problems with https connections to NCBI test-sra: test-sra print amount of available disk space in user repositories vdb-config: vdb-config correctly works when there is non-canonical path in configuration vdb: increased tenacity in flushing data to disk to accommodate behaviors of file systems such as Lustre. NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.8.1-3 February 7, 2017 abi-dump, fastq-dump, illumina-dump, sff-dump: fixed generation of bad gzipped output prefetch: fixed download of dbGaP vdbcache files via HTTP NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.8.1-2 January 19, 2017 prefetch: fixed download of dbGaP files via HTTP NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.8.1-1 January 18, 2017 prefetch: rolled back to 2.8.0 ( fails to download dbGaP files via HTTP ) NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.8.1 December 22, 2016 latf-load: fixed an occasional crash on Ubuntu prefetch: now streams data over http when retrieving entire files sam-dump: use of --seqid options creates now headers consistent with sam-lines test-sra: added ability to print http response headers blastn_vdb, tblastn_vdb: reduced dependency upon external libraries through static linkage NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.8.0-2 December 8, 2016 bam-load: changed memcpy to memmove when regions overlap - seems to corrupt data on centos7 blastn_vdb, tblastn_vdb : removed library dependencies that were preventing users from launching these tools cg-load: added loading of CG File format v2.4 NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.8.0 October 7, 2016 HTTPS-ENABLED RELEASE bam-load: 10x Genomics CB and UB tags are preserved bam-load: Orphaned secondary alignments will be converted to primary alignments bam-load: READ_GROUP is populated from 'BC' if 'RG' has no value bam-load: fixed support for '-V' and '--version' command-line options blast: Updated BLAST engine to 2.5.0+ version kfg, kns: Use environment variables to determine the proxy for a http protocol kfg, vdb-config: vdb-config-GUI has now option to pick up proxy-setting from environment kns: All tools and libraries now support https latf-load: now handles column values up to 64MB long prefetch: Fixed prefetch not to print misleading 'unknown integer storage type' error messages sam-dump: CB and UB tags are now created if loaded via bam-load from 10xSingleCell sra-tools: presence of ./ncbi (even if empty) subdirectory next to the executable files is no longer required, unless configuration files are needed. test-sra: test-sra prints network information test-sra: test-sra prints version of ncbi-vdb or ngs-sdk dynamic library vdb-dump: does not ignore table-argument on plain table any more, has to be SEQUENCE on plain tables if used NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.7.0 July 14, 2016 align, bam-load: Insert-only alignments no longer cause incorrect binning bam-load: fixed case where WGS accessions where not being read correctly bam-load: will NOT perform spot assembly using hard clipped secondary alignments, even when 'make-spots-with-secondary' is enabled WILL perform spot assembly using hard-clipped secondary alignments when 'defer-secondary' is enabled blast, kfg, ncbi-vdb, sra-tools, vfs: restored possibility to disable local caching fastdump, sra-tools: new tool to perform fast dumps of a whole run in either fastq or a custom format for one of our customers. kar: Alter the default ordering of components of an SRA archive for better network performance kdb, kfs, kns: Added blob validation for data being fetched remotely kfg: When loading configuration files on Windows USERPROFILE environment variable is used before HOME kfg: modified auxiliary remote access configuration to use load-balanced servers kns: POST will no longer append a content length value when attempting a retry ngs, search, sra-search: sra-search was modified to support multiple threads. ngs-engine, ngs-tools, sra-tools, vfs: The "auxiliary" nodes in configuration are now ignored pileup-stats: updated commandline parser to eat unprocessed parameters search: now supports multi-threaded search sra-search: now supports sorted output sra-tools: fixed exit codes for a number of applications in response to command line options vdb-validate: A new checks were added for SEQUENCE table vfs: environment variable VDB_PWFILE is no longer used gatk, hisat2: we are now releasing 3rd party tools GATK and Hisat2 that are built to access the NCBI SRA NCBI External Developer Release: SRA Toolkit 2.6.3 May 25, 2016 bam-load: Corrects an optimization used to compare read lengths when lengths are greater than 255 bam-load: alignments which are below the minimum match count but with at least 1/2 of the aligned bases matching are accepted bam-load: improved performance of SAM parsing code bam-load: non-fatal result codes no longer cause the reader thread to quit early bam-load: will NOT do spot assembly using hard clipped secondary alignments even when make-spots-with-secondary is enabled; WILL do spot assembly using hard-clipped secondary alignments when defer-secondary is enabled build: MSVS 2013 toolset (12.0) is now supported across all repositories vdb: Fixed a bound on memory cache that would never flush under certain access modes NCBI Release: SRA Toolkit 2.6.2 Apr 21, 2016 align-cache: a tool producing vdbcache that reduces effects of random access and improves speed. bam-load: Fixed bug in validation code for unsorted bam files bam-load: If two (or more) local reference names refer to the same global reference, bam-load will record the first one used and report the change. bam-load: Secondary alignment will be used for spot assembly if the loader is explicitly told to use them bam-load: The code that had invalid item in index problem was removed in the process of addressing a performance issue. bam-load: change reporting of fatal warnings into fatal errors bam-load: changed from an error to a warning if using secondary alignments to create spots bam-load: low-match secondary alignments are now discarded; low-match primary alignments are logged, and if too many, it will abort the load. bam-load: records the contents of the BX tag bam-load: rules for spot assembly were reverted to assembling spots only on primary alignments blast, build: Improved blast tools: all required libraries are linked statically. copycat: now runs on Centos 7; no longer uses system-installed magic file dbgap-mount: Added support for standard options "-L" and "-o", which allow users to determine the logging level and log output file dbgap-mount: New optional parameter was introduced '-u' which allows user to unmount FUSE/DOKAN volume. Implemented on linux and windows fastq-load: The (old) fastq-loader will properly report multiple reads on the 454 platform (and still fail). kar: added '--md5' option to create md5sum compatible auxiliary file kget: kget has a new option --full to match wget in speed. added examples.sh latf-load: now allows undescores inside spot group names latf-load: now loads data produced by fastq-dump latf-load: updated to support Illumina tag line format with identifier at the front pileup-stats: added -V (--version) option: prints out the software pileup-stats: pileup-stats: added version support (options -V or --version) prefetch: Added --eliminate-quals option which speeds up HTTP download by ignoring QUALITY column`s data prefetch: Fixed failure when running prefetch.exe "-a" when there is a space after "-a" prefetch: messages about maximum size of download are made more user-friendly. prefetch: now will download even when caching is disabled ref-variation: --input-file option allows to specify input accessions and paths in the file ref-variation: added "count-strand" option: it controls relative orientation of 3' and 5' fragments. ref-variation: added -c option to flush output immediately; reporting zero matches ref-variation: added a way to specify a number of repeats of the query ref-variation: improved threading management ref-variation: removed irrelevant warnings reported in some cases in debug version only sam-dump: Segfault no longer occurs when confronted with large amounts of header lines sam-dump: added option to produce MD tags sam-dump: added support for generating 10xgenomics BX tag sam-dump: filters out duplicates in the rows that it generates sra-sort: correctly generates spot-id column even in the absence of primary alignments sra-stat: no longer fails when CS_NATIVE column is not present. sra-tools, vdb-config: Removed dependency of mac binaries on unnecessary libraries, e.g. libxml2. var-expand: a tool for batch variation expansion vdb-config: now handles standard options such as --option-file vdb-validate: Added a new set of checks that can be triggered by using one of two "--sdc:" cmd options vdb-validate: Added code to continue with the next row when column has discontiguous blobs