+Beta release 0.1.12 (2 December, 2010)
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+This is another bug fix release:
+
+ * Fixed a memory violation in mpileup, which causes segfault. Release
+ 0.1.9 and above are affected.
+
+ * Fixed a memory violation in the indel caller, which does not causes
+ segfault, but may potentially affect deletion calls in an unexpected
+ way. Release 0.1.10 and above are affected.
+
+ * Fixed a bug in computing r-square in bcftools. Few are using this
+ functionality and it only has minor effect.
+
+ * Fixed a memory leak in bam_fetch().
+
+ * Fixed a bug in writing meta information to the BAM index for the last
+ sequence. This bug is invisible to most users, but it is a bug anyway.
+
+(0.1.12: 2 December 2010, r859)
+
+
+
+Beta release 0.1.11 (21 November, 2010)
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+This is mainly a bug fix release:
+
+ * Fixed a bug in random retrieval (since 0.1.8). It occurs when reads
+ are retrieved from a small region containing no reads.
+
+ * Fixed a bug in pileup (since 0.1.9). The bug causes an assertion
+ failure when the first CIGAR operation is a deletion.
+
+ * Improved fault tolerence in remote access.
+
+One minor feature has been implemented in bcftools:
+
+ * Added a reference-free variant calling mode. In this mode, a site is
+ regarded as a variat iff the sample(s) contains two or more alleles;
+ the meaning of the QUAL field in the VCF output is changed
+ accordingly. Effectively, the reference allele is irrelevant to the
+ result in the new mode, although the reference sequence has to be
+ used in realignment when SAMtools computes genotype likelihoods.
+
+In addition, since 0.1.10, the `pileup' command has been deprecated by
+`mpileup' which is more powerful and more accurate. The `pileup' command
+will not be removed in the next few releases, but new features will not
+be added.
+
+(0.1.11: 21 November 2010, r851)
+
+
+
+Beta Release 0.1.10 (16 November, 2010)
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+This release is featured as the first major improvement to the indel
+caller. The method is similar to the old one implemented in the pileup
+command, but the details are handled more carefully both in theory and
+in practice. As a result, the new indel caller usually gives more
+accurate indel calls, though at the cost of sensitivity. The caller is
+implemented in the mpileup command and is invoked by default. It works
+with multiple samples.
+
+Other notable changes:
+
+ * With the -r option, the calmd command writes the difference between
+ the original base quality and the BAQ capped base quality at the BQ
+ tag but does not modify the base quality. Please use -Ar to overwrite
+ the original base quality (the 0.1.9 behavior).
+
+ * Allow to set a maximum per-sample read depth to reduce memory. In
+ 0.1.9, most of memory is wasted for the ultra high read depth in some
+ regions (e.g. the chr1 centromere).
+
+ * Optionally write per-sample read depth and per-sample strand bias
+ P-value.
+
+ * Compute equal-tail (Bayesian) credible interval of site allele
+ frequency at the CI95 VCF annotation.
+
+ * Merged the vcfutils.pl varFilter and filter4vcf for better SNP/indel
+ filtering.
+
+(0.1.10: 16 November 2010, r829)
+
+
+
+Beta Release 0.1.9 (27 October, 2010)
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+This release is featured as the first major improvement to the samtools'
+SNP caller. It comes with a revised MAQ error model, the support of
+multi-sample SNP calling and the computation of base alignment quality
+(BAQ).
+
+The revised MAQ error model is based on the original model. It solves an
+issue of miscalling SNPs in repetitive regions. Althought such SNPs can
+usually be filtered at a later step, they mess up unfiltered calls. This
+is a theoretical flaw in the original model. The revised MAQ model
+deprecates the orginal MAQ model and the simplified SOAPsnp model.
+
+Multi-sample SNP calling is separated in two steps. The first is done by
+samtools mpileup and the second by a new program, bcftools, which is
+included in the samtools source code tree. Multi-sample SNP calling also
+works for single sample and has the advantage of enabling more powerful
+filtration. It is likely to deprecate pileup in future once a proper
+indel calling method is implemented.
+
+BAQ is the Phred-scaled probability of a read base being wrongly
+aligned. Capping base quality by BAQ has been shown to be very effective
+in suppressing false SNPs caused by misalignments around indels or in
+low-complexity regions with acceptable compromise on computation
+time. This strategy is highly recommended and can be used with other SNP
+callers as well.
+
+In addition to the three major improvements, other notable changes are:
+
+ * Changes to the pileup format. A reference skip (the N CIGAR operator)
+ is shown as '<' or '>' depending on the strand. Tview is also changed
+ accordingly.
+
+ * Accelerated pileup. The plain pileup is about 50% faster.
+
+ * Regional merge. The merge command now accepts a new option to merge
+ files in a specified region.
+
+ * Fixed a bug in bgzip and razip which causes source files to be
+ deleted even if option -c is applied.
+
+ * In APIs, propogate errors to downstream callers and make samtools
+ return non-zero values once errors occur.
+
+(0.1.9: 27 October 2010, r783)
+
+
+
+Beta Release 0.1.8 (11 July, 2010)
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Notable functional changes:
+
+ * Added the `reheader' command which replaces a BAM header with a new
+ header. This command is much faster than replacing header by
+ BAM->SAM->BAM conversions.
+
+ * Added the `mpileup' command which computes the pileup of multiple
+ alignments.
+
+ * The `index' command now stores the number of mapped and unmapped
+ reads in the index file. This information can be retrieved quickly by
+ the new `idxstats' command.
+
+ * By default, pileup used the SOAPsnp model for SNP calling. This
+ avoids the floating overflow in the MAQ model which leads to spurious
+ calls in repetitive regions, although these calls will be immediately
+ filtered by varFilter.
+
+ * The `tview' command now correctly handles CIGARs like 7I10M and
+ 10M1P1I10M which cause assertion failure in earlier versions.
+
+ * Tview accepts a region like `=10,000' where `=' stands for the
+ current sequence name. This saves typing for long sequence names.
+
+ * Added the `-d' option to `pileup' which avoids slow indel calling
+ in ultradeep regions by subsampling reads locally.
+
+ * Added the `-R' option to `view' which retrieves alignments in read
+ groups listed in the specified file.
+
+Performance improvements:
+
+ * The BAM->SAM conversion is up to twice faster, depending on the
+ characteristic of the input.
+
+ * Parsing SAM headers with a lot of reference sequences is now much
+ faster.
+
+ * The number of lseek() calls per query is reduced when the query
+ region contains no read alignments.
+
+Bug fixes:
+
+ * Fixed an issue in the indel caller that leads to miscall of indels.
+ Note that this solution may not work well when the sequencing indel
+ error rate is higher than the rate of SNPs.
+
+ * Fixed another issue in the indel caller which may lead to incorrect
+ genotype.
+
+ * Fixed a bug in `sort' when option `-o' is applied.
+
+ * Fixed a bug in `view -r'.
+
+APIs and other changes:
+
+ * Added iterator interfaces to random access and pileup. The callback
+ interfaces directly call the iterator interfaces.
+
+ * The BGZF blocks holding the BAM header are indepedent of alignment
+ BGZF blocks. Alignment records shorter than 64kB is guaranteed to be
+ fully contained in one BGZF block. This change is fully compatible
+ with the old version of samtools/picard.
+
+Changes in other utilities:
+
+ * Updated export2sam.pl by Chris Saunders.
+
+ * Improved the sam2vcf.pl script.
+
+ * Added a Python version of varfilter.py by Aylwyn Scally.
+
+(0.1.8: 11 July 2010, r613)
+
+
+
+Beta Release 0.1.7 (10 November, 2009)
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Notable changes:
+
+ * Improved the indel caller in complex scenariors, in particular for
+ long reads. The indel caller is now able to make reasonable indel
+ calls from Craig Venter capillary reads.
+
+ * Rewrote single-end duplicate removal with improved
+ performance. Paired-end reads are not touched.
+
+ * Duplicate removal is now library aware. Samtools remove potential
+ PCR/optical dupliates inside a library rather than across libraries.
+
+ * SAM header is now fully parsed, although this functionality is not
+ used in merging and so on.
+
+ * In samtools merge, optionally take the input file name as RG-ID and
+ attach the RG tag to each alignment.
+
+ * Added FTP support in the RAZF library. RAZF-compressed reference
+ sequence can be retrieved remotely.
+
+ * Improved network support for Win32.
+
+ * Samtools sort and merge are now stable.
+
+Changes in other utilities:
+
+ * Implemented sam2vcf.pl that converts the pileup format to the VCF
+ format.
+
+ * This release of samtools is known to work with the latest
+ Bio-Samtools Perl module.
+
+(0.1.7: 10 November 2009, r510)
+
+
+
+Beta Release 0.1.6 (2 September, 2009)
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Notable changes:
+
+ * In tview, do not show a blank screen when no reads mapped to the
+ corresponding region.
+
+ * Implemented native HTTP support in the BGZF library. Samtools is now
+ able to directly open a BAM file on HTTP. HTTP proxy is also
+ supported via the "http_proxy" environmental variable.
+
+ * Samtools is now compitable with the MinGW (win32) compiler and the
+ PDCurses library.
+
+ * The calmd (or fillmd) command now calculates the NM tag and replaces
+ MD tags if they are wrong.
+
+ * The view command now recognizes and optionally prints FLAG in HEXs or
+ strings to make a SAM file more friendly to human eyes. This is a
+ samtools-C extension, not implemented in Picard for the time
+ being. Please type `samtools view -?' for more information.
+
+ * BAM files now have an end-of-file (EOF) marker to facilitate
+ truncation detection. A warning will be given if an on-disk BAM file
+ does not have this marker. The warning will be seen on BAM files
+ generated by an older version of samtools. It does NO harm.
+
+ * New key bindings in tview: `r' to show read names and `s' to show
+ reference skip (N operation) as deletions.
+
+ * Fixed a bug in `samtools merge -n'.
+
+ * Samtools merge now optionally copies the header of a user specified
+ SAM file to the resultant BAM output.
+
+ * Samtools pileup/tview works with a CIGAR with the first or the last
+ operation is an indel.
+
+ * Fixed a bug in bam_aux_get().
+
+
+Changes in other utilies:
+
+ * Fixed wrong FLAG in maq2sam.
+
+
+(0.1.6: 2 September 2009, r453)
+
+
+