Absolutly All positions in mpileup (previously -aa)

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale

Research direction

Begin with the bcftools mpileup command and compare its output with samtools mpileup -aa using the attached XMEN example files. Confirm that the requested behavior is a VCF containing every reference position, including sites with no read coverage; done means establishing the supported command or the scope of a needed feature.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Dear developers,

I am looking to generate a VCF file in which all positions of the reference are represented - so also those where my input bam has no read coverage. In SAMtools mpileup, the option -aa exists which does what I need, but I understand SAMtools mpileup is depricated and shouldn't be used (?). I also am unable to pipe the output from SAMtools mpileup into BCFtools call for generating a VCF, have so far been unable to find another way to convert SAMtools' pileup format to a VCF. Is there a native option in BCFtools mpileup that would result the -aa behaviour from SAMtools, ie resulting in a VCF where all bases of the reference are present?

Any suggestions would be much appreciated! I'm attaching a small example file, in case that helps.
XMEN.zip

way to reproduce:
bcftools mpileup XMEN1_10.bam -f XMEN-reference_10.fasta

outputs only sites with coverage

samtools mpileup -aa XMEN1_10.bam

outputs all sites (in pileup format I think?)

Many thanks!

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