March 15, 2011
* 2.2.25 release
* Enhanced documentation, includes simplified setup instructions, available at
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK1762

Improvements:
* Added support for hard-masking of BLAST databases.
* Improve performance of makeblastdb for FASTA input with large numbers of 
  sequences, improve error checking.
* Allow Best Hit options and XML formatting for Blast2Sequences mode
* Allow multiple query sequences for psiblast.
* Allow specification of any multiple sequence alignment sequence as the
  master with the -in_msa psiblast argument.
* Add an optional -input_type argument to makeblastdb.
* Added support for query and subject length to tabular output.
* Performance of -seqidlist argument improved.
* The minimum of the number of descriptions and alignments is now used for tabular and 
  XML output (consistent with the behavior of the older blastall applications).

Bug fixes: 
* Makeblastdb and blastdbcmd problems with parsing, storing, and 
  retrieving sequence identifiers.
* Missing subject identifiers in tabular output.
* Blast_formatter ignoring -num_alignments and -num_descriptions
* Blast archive format could be saved incorrectly with multiple queries.
* Blast_formatter established an unneeded network connection.
* Blast_formatter did not save masking information correctly.
* Rpstblastn might crash if searching many sequences.
* Indexed megablast would not run in multi-threaded mode.
* Query title in the PSSM saved by psiblast was not being stored.
* Possbile failure to run in multi-threaded mode with multiple queries or large database sequences.
* Tblastn runs with database masking might miss matches.

October 30, 2010
* 2.2.24 bug fix release
* Improved makeblastdb performance and taxid_map option
* Fixed segmentation faults on blastn and megablast
* Fixed truncated output for sequence input with extra spaces in the defline
* Fixed problem with MacOSX binaries on MacOSX 10.5

August 2, 2010
* 2.2.24 release
* Added support for BLAST Archive format (see BLAST+ user manual)
* Added the blast_formatter application (see BLAST+ user manual)
* Added support for translated subject soft masking in the BLAST databases
* Added support for the BLAST Trace-back operations (btop) output format
* Added command line options to blastdbcmd for listing available BLAST databases
* Improved performance of formatting of remote BLAST searches
* Use a consistent exit code for out of memory conditions
* Fixed bug in indexed megablast with multiple space-separated BLAST databases
* Fixed bugs in legacy_blast.pl, blastdbcmd, rpsblast, and makeblastdb
* Fixed Windows installer for 64-bit installations

Feb 03, 2010
* 2.2.23 release
* Bug fix for tabular output formatting involving BLAST databases that do not
  have parseable deflines.
* Fixed problem displaying accessions in XML output format.
* Prevent collisions between queries and subject sequences with local
  identifiers.
* Fixed megablast performance regression when used with query masking.
* Fixed seg filtering failure for blastx and genomic sequences.
* Implemented saving search strategies in bl2seq mode.
* Fixed bug in tabular output format with qseq, sseq, pident and ppos keywords.
* Fixed bug with blastp-short task.
* Fixed blastdbcmd retrieval of taxids for BLAST databases without GIs.
* Added makeblastdb support for adding masking information to existing BLAST
  databases.

Nov 02, 2009
* Internal bug fix release for 2.2.22
* Fix issue dealing with opening BLAST databases which contain references to a
  BLAST database specified with a relative path.
* Prevent collisions between queries and subject sequences with local
  identifiers

Sep 27, 2009
* 2.2.22 release
* Added entrez_query command line option for restricting BLAST databases.
* Added support for psi-tblastn to the tblastn command line application via
  the -in_pssm option.
* Improved documentation for subject masking feature in user manual.
* User interface improvements to windowmasker.
* Made the specification of BLAST databases to resolve GIs/accessions
  configurable.
* update_blastdb.pl downloads and checks BLAST database MD5 checksum files.
* Allowing long words with blastp.
* Added support for overriding megablast index when importing search strategy
  files.
* Added support for best-hit algorithm parameters in strategy files.
* Bug fixes in blastx and tblastn with genomic sequences, subject masking,
  blastdbcheck, and the SEG filtering algorithm.

May 27, 2009
* First 2.2.21 release
* Added support for Best-Hit algorithm.
* Added support for -in_msa psiblast option. 
* Performance improvements and bug fixes to subject soft masking feature (note:
  the file format for the files containing the masking information has changed
  in a non-backwards compatible way).
* Changed command line option to specify single soft masking algorithm to mask
  BLAST databases from -mask_subjects to -db_soft_mask.
* Masked FASTA and subject masks can be obtained via blastdbcmd.
* Improved error messages when makeblastdb processes masking information.
* Bug fixes in tabular output for translated searches.
* Bug fixes to makeblastdb.
* Bug fixes to search strategies and megablast.
* Bug fixes to XML output.
* Bug fixes and performance improvements to multi-threaded execution.
* Bug fixes to lower case masking in blastx.
* Bug fixes to ungapped searches.
* Added support for smaller lookup tables for small queries.
* Added support for partial sequence fetching during traceback.
* Fixed the 2-hit algorithm so that no overlap between two hits is allowed.
* Implemented a new method to compute effective observations and new
entropy-based method to compute column-specific pseudocounts in PSI-BLAST.
* Remote BLAST database data loader is used as a fallback if local BLAST 
databases cannot be found.
* Bug fixes, improved error messages, and support for ASN.1 input in 
makeblastdb.
* Bug fixes and performance improvements to subject masking feature.
* Added the update_blastdb.pl script
* Updated BLAST+ user manual with documentation about configuring BLAST, 
automatic resolution of sequence identifiers, and a description of how the 
BLAST databases are searched.

November 3, 2008
* First 2.2.19 release
* Made sequence ID/title display uniform in sequence filtering applications.
* Fixed incorrect display of filtering options in XML output.
* Fixed handling of empty sequences in BLAST input. 
* Fixed negative strand handling for tblastn/tblastx.

October 14, 2008
* Added update_blastdb.pl script to distribution of BLAST+ command line 
  applications.
* Changed a few PSI-BLAST constants for pseudo-counts.
* Bug fix in blastdbcmd to distinguish non-redundant sequence titles.
* Bug fix to display BLAST database information remotely from outside NCBI for
  XML output. 

September 24, 2008
* Fix to prevent initial seed extension from going beyond context boundary.
* Improvements to reduce memory usage when query splitting is applied.
* Print the accession and version for blastdbcmd's %a output format.
* gilists/negative gilists are not saved in search strategies or supported in
  remote blast searches.
* legacy_blast.pl fixed for MacOSX, as well as extended support for megablast
  formatting options (-D, -f).
* Enhancements to Mac installer to add installation path to user's PATH.
* ASN.1 output is now of type Seq-annot.
* -lcase_masking option now applies to subject sequences as well as queries.
* Bug fix for creation of masked databases with non-redundant sequences that use
  a BLAST database as its data source.
* Bug fix for merging masking locations.

August 21, 2008
* First internal release
