From 77abafaaf3110e3ec92579cd58bccdb5f6559ba7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Heng Li <lh3@me.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2021 13:18:56 -0400
Subject: [PATCH] prepare for release

---
 NEWS.md   | 86 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 README.md |  5 ++++
 2 files changed, 91 insertions(+)

diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 5c0ab9c..fbfeb60 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,3 +1,89 @@
+Release 2.18-r1015 (9 April 2021)
+---------------------------------
+
+This release fixes multiple rare bugs in minimap2 and adds additional
+functionality to paftools.js.
+
+Changes to minimap2:
+
+ * Bugfix: a rare segfault caused by an off-by-one error (#489)
+
+ * Bugfix: minimap2 segfaulted due to an uninitilized variable (#622 and #625).
+
+ * Bugfix: minimap2 parsed spaces as field separators in BED (#721). This led
+   to issues when the BED name column contains spaces.
+
+ * Bugfix: minimap2 `--split-prefix` did not work with long reference names
+   (#394).
+
+ * Bugfix: option `--junc-bonus` didn't work (#513)
+
+ * Bugfix: minimap2 didn't return 1 on I/O errors (#532)
+
+ * Bugfix: the `de:f` tag (sequence divergence) could be negative if there were
+   ambiguous bases
+
+ * Bugfix: fixed two undefined behaviors caused by calling memcpy() on
+   zero-length blocks (#443)
+
+ * Bugfix: there were duplicated SAM @SQ lines if option `--split-prefix` is in
+   use (#400 and #527)
+
+ * Bugfix: option -K had to be smaller than 2 billion (#491). This was caused
+   by a 32-bit integer overflow.
+
+ * Improvement: optionally compile against SIMDe (#597). Minimap2 should work
+   with IBM POWER CPUs, though this has not been tested. To compile with SIMDe,
+   please use `make -f Makefile.simde`.
+
+ * Improvement: more informative error message for I/O errors (#454) and for
+   FASTQ parsing errors (#510)
+
+ * Improvement: abort given malformatted RG line (#541)
+
+ * Improvement: better formula to estimate the `dv:f` tag (approximate sequence
+   divergence). See DOI:10.1101/2021.01.15.426881.
+
+ * New feature: added the `--mask-len` option to fine control the removal of
+   redundant hits (#659). The default behavior is unchanged.
+
+Changes to mappy:
+
+ * Bugfix: mappy caused segmentation fault if the reference index is not
+   present (#413).
+
+ * Bugfix: fixed a memory leak via 238b6bb3
+
+ * Change: always require Cython to compile the mappy module (#723). Older
+   mappy packages at PyPI bundled the C source code generated by Cython such
+   that end users did not need to install Cython to compile mappy. However, as
+   Python 3.9 is breaking backward compatibility, older mappy does not work
+   with Python 3.9 anymore. We have to add this Cython dependency as a
+   workaround.
+
+Changes to paftools.js:
+
+ * Bugfix: the "part10-" line from asmgene was wrong (#581)
+
+ * Improvement: compatibility with GTF files from GenBank (#422)
+
+ * New feature: asmgene also checks missing multi-copy genes
+
+ * New feature: added the misjoin command to evaluate large-scale misjoins and
+   megabase-long inversions.
+
+Although given the many bug fixes and minor improvements, the core algorithm
+stays the same. This version of minimap2 produces nearly identical alignments
+to v2.17 except corner cases.
+
+Now unimap is recommended over minimap2 for aligning long contigs against a
+reference genome. It often takes less wall-clock time and is much more
+sensitive to long insertions and deletions.
+
+(2.18: 9 April 2021, r1015)
+
+
+
 Release 2.17-r941 (4 May 2019)
 ------------------------------
 
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 65395e6..ae6eac5 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -26,6 +26,10 @@ cd minimap2 && make
 # man page for detailed command line options
 man ./minimap2.1
 ```
+[Unimap][unimap] is recommended for aligning long contigs against a reference
+genome. It often takes less wall-clock time and is much more sensitive to long
+insertions and deletions.
+
 ## Table of Contents
 
 - [Getting Started](#started)
@@ -398,3 +402,4 @@ mappy` or [from BioConda][mappyconda] via `conda install -c bioconda mappy`.
 [manpage-cs]: https://lh3.github.io/minimap2/minimap2.html#10
 [doi]: https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/bty191
 [smide]: https://github.com/nemequ/simde
+[unimap]: https://github.com/lh3/unimap