Do I need to build the package?

RNAstructure is provided both as source code and as prebuilt executables. Prebuilt executables are currently available for 32-bit Linux, 64-bit Linux, Max OS-X (Leopard and higher), and 32-bit Windows. If you are using one of these operating systems, then you probably do not need to build the package. The available executables will work fine.

Configuring the Compiler and Build Settings

The command line (text) interfaces for RNAstructure are built using the Makefile in the main directory (RNAstructure/). The definitions for compiler and flags are in RNAstructure/compiler.h  Example compiler settings are provided for Linux, Mac, and Windows (using Cygwin) platforms.

Building on Unix/Linux/OS-X

To build the package, use the command "make all" in RNAstructure/. The command line executables are built and placed in RNAstructure/exe/. You should probably then update your PATH variable to include this directory.

An optional "make install" command will copy all the executables to the /usr/local/RNAstructure/ directory. This is helpful in a shared computing environment. This command can only be executed as root.

Building on Windows

For Windows command line interfaces, you have two options for compiling RNAstructure:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 and the Intel C++ compiler
  In the folder RNAstructure_windows_text_interfaces, use Visual Studio 2012 to open the solution  RNAstructure_windows_text_interfaces.sln
  Then build using Visual Studio. The executables will be deposited in the Release sub-folder.
• Linux-style build process using Cygwin and MingW-W64
  Cygwin provides a complete POSIX environment on Windows and allows compilation of RNAstructure using the same framework as on Linux (i.e. gcc/g++ and GNU make).
  Simply run "make all" from the RNAstructure folder.  The compiled executables will be placed in the RNAstructure/exe directory.
  (MingW-W64 is a fork of the MinGW project that adds the ability to compile 64-bit Windows applications using GCC.The file compiler.h includes flags and compiler definitions for building on Windows. The name of the compiler may need to be changed depending on the "flavor" of MingW-W64 that you install.)