BlastStation: How To Build NCBI Blast+ on Windows

How To Build NCBI Blast+ on Windows

This page describes how to build NCBI BLAST+ on Windows.

The procedure below was confirmed to work fine for NCBI Blast+ 2.2.24 on Windows 7 with Visual C++ 2008.

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Up-to-date as of 11/30/2010

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1. Preparation

1.1. Install free Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition. Visit http://www.microsoft.com/express/downloads/ , click "Visual Studio 2008 Express" tab, click "Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition" in the left column, select language and click "Free Download" button. When download is finished, double click downloaded vcsetup.exe and follow the instruction.
1.2. Download NCBI Blast+ source from ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/executables/blast+/2.2.24/ncbi-blast-2.2.24+-src.tar.gz
1.3. Extract downloaded file. If you don't have such a software, visit http://www.ofzenandcomputing.com/zanswers/2558 for example.
1.4. You will get c++ folder in ncbi-blast-2.2.24+-src folder.

2. Configuration and Build process

2.1. Launch Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition
2.2. Open ncbi-blast-2.2.24+-src\c++\compilers\msvc900_prj\static\build\ncbi_cpp project
2.3. Select ReleaseDLL instead of DebugDLL
2.4. Highlight -CONFIGURE- in Solution Explorer and build it
2.5. Click on “Reload” when "File Modification Detected" alert is shown
2.6. Confirm ReleaseDLL is selected. All executables will use DLL-specific version of the run-time library. Select ReleaseMT to use static version of the run-time library.
2.7. Highlight -BUILD-ALL- in Solution Explorer and build it

2.8. All binaries such as blastn and blastp are found in ncbi-blast-2.2.24+-src\c++\compilers\msvc900_prj\static\bin\ReleaseDLL.