Optional settings on installation

[Leo-alves]

Hy there,
I would like to suggest if there could be an optional installation where we choose what packages to install. For example, if I do not want Quast to install Blast or other packages (because they are already installed on this machine) I could tell it or provide the package names to be installed.

Thanks in advance.

[alexeigurevich]

Hi Leo,
Thanks for the nice suggestion. We are actually moving into this direction already. In particular, in the latest release, we don't install several dependencies if we see them in PATH. Note that Blast is among these dependencies, so if we see makeblastdb, blastn, or tblastn in PATH, we should not download/install them, does it working for you? I think we will enlarge the initial list of such "checked-in-PATH" dependencies in further releases.

Also, in Bioconda installation we simply specify many external dependencies and thus don't install them ourselves (see here). This is somehow similar to what you suggests.