This is a rewrite of DSSP, now offering full mmCIF support. The difference with previous releases of DSSP is that it now writes out an annotated mmCIF file by default, storing the secondary structure information in the _struct_conf category.

Another new feature in this version of DSSP is that it now defines Poly-Proline helices as well.

The DSSP program was designed by Wolfgang Kabsch and Chris Sander to standardize secondary structure assignment. DSSP is a database of secondary structure assignments (and much more) for all protein entries in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). DSSP is also the program that calculates DSSP entries from PDB entries.

DSSP does not predict secondary structure.

The tools are based on libcif++ and the code is written in modern C++ so you need a compiler capable of handling C++17 code.

Make sure you install libcif++ first before building.

After that, building should be as easy as typing:

./configure
make
sudo make install

See man mkdssp for more info.