BALL — Biochemical Algorithms Library

BALL is a C++ framework for molecular modelling and computational structural bioinformatics. BALLView is its OpenGL-based molecular-visualization GUI application.

Download

Pre-built, ready-to-run BALLView packages for macOS, Windows, and Linux are published on the latest release page. macOS builds are signed + notarized (as of v1.7.1) and Windows installers are code-signed.

Platform	Download
macOS (Apple Silicon)	BALLView-<version>-macos-arm64.dmg
Windows (x64)	BALLView-<version>-windows-x64-installer.exe (installer) or BALLView-<version>-windows-x64.zip (portable)
Linux (x64 / arm64)	.deb, .rpm, .AppImage, or .tar.gz

→ See all releases for older versions and release notes.

Build from source

BALL uses the CMake build system. Dependencies come from system/Homebrew packages on macOS/Linux and from vcpkg on Windows. Per-platform, step-by-step instructions live in:

• macOS: BUILD-macos.md
• Linux: BUILD-linux.md
• Windows / general: the Development Environment wiki

The generic flow, once the dependencies are in place:

# From the top-level directory (the one with CMakeLists.txt):
cmake -B build -S .
cmake --build build

To produce installable packages (macOS/Windows/Linux), configure with -DBALL_ENABLE_PACKAGING=ON and build the package target:

cmake -B build -S . -DBALL_ENABLE_PACKAGING=ON
cmake --build build --target package

On Windows, run the commands from a Visual Studio command shell.

Documentation

• API documentation can be built locally with cmake --build build --target doc (requires Doxygen).
• Developer and build documentation: the project wiki.

Feedback and contact

Please help us improve BALL by reporting problems, bugs, criticism, and feature requests — either via the GitHub issue tracker or the mailing lists:

• Issues: https://github.com/BALL-Project/ball/issues
• User list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ball-user-list
• Developer list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ball-developer-list
• Project website: https://ball-project.org

Citing BALL

If you use BALL, please cite (DOI: 10.1186/1471-2105-11-531):

Andreas Hildebrandt, Anna Katharina Dehof, Alexander Rurainski, Andreas Bertsch, Marcel Schumann, Nora C Toussaint, Andreas Moll, Daniel Stöckel, Stefan Nickels, Sabine C Müller, Hans-Peter Lenhof, Oliver Kohlbacher: BALL — Biochemical Algorithms Library 1.3, BMC Bioinformatics, 11:531 (2010).

License

BALL is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 (LICENSE).