Compile BLAT on x86_64 Ubuntu 10.04

Recently I needed to compile BLAT for x86_64 on Ubuntu 10.04 server. The BLAT pre-compiled binaries for linux are 32-bit. Here is how you do it:

1. apt-get install build-essential
2. Download  BLAT source
3. remove the -Werror compiler flag to treat warnings as errors
4. mkdir -p ~/bin/x86_64
5. export MACHTYPE=x86_64
6. make

Step (3) above requires editing the /inc/common.mk file, line 17 goes from     


HG_WARN_ERR = -DJK_WARN -Wall -Werror


to 


HG_WARN_ERR = -DJK_WARN -Wall

Make places the executables into ~/bin/x86_64 directory. Either add this to $PATH or copy the files to /usr/local/bin