Installation Guide

System Requirements

  • Julia: 1.10 or higher
  • CPU: Multiple cores and threads recommended. Increasing the number of threads reduces computation time.
  • RAM: >=16GB recommended. RAM availability should exceed the spectral library size by at least 4GB. For searching against the yeast proteome, as little as 6-8 GB may suffice.
  • Storage: SSD recommended. Available disk space at least double the total size of the .arrow formmated raw files to search. The .arrow files are usually ~1/2 the size of the vendor files.
  • Operating System: Windows, Linux, or macOS

Installation

End-User Installation

  1. Download the installer for your operating system from the releases page.
  2. Run the installer. It places a pioneer executable on your PATH.
  3. On first launch:
    • Windows/Linuxpioneer downloads IntelOpenMP and MKL the first time it runs.
    • macOS – Gatekeeper verifies the binary and the first run can take about a minute. Zipped binaries require manual Gatekeeper approval and are not recommended.
  4. Verify the installation:
    pioneer --help

Docker

Run Pioneer in a container without installing dependencies.

  1. Pull the prebuilt image:
    docker pull dennisgoldfarb/pioneer:latest
  2. Execute Pioneer inside the container, mounting a host directory (e.g. the current directory) to access data:
    docker run --rm -it -v $(pwd):/work dennisgoldfarb/pioneer:latest pioneer --help
    Replace pioneer --help with any subcommand.
  3. To build the image locally using the included Dockerfile:
    docker build -t pioneer .

Development Setup

To work on Pioneer itself, set up a local development environment.

  1. Install Julia 1.10 or higher from julia.org.
  2. Clone the repository:
    git clone https://github.com/nwamsley1/Pioneer.jl.git
    cd Pioneer.jl
  3. Start Julia in the development environment and activate the project:
    julia --project=dev
    pkg> develop ./
  4. In the Julia REPL load Revise and Pioneer:
    julia> using Revise, Pioneer
  5. Install PioneerConverter to convert Thermo RAW files to Arrow format.
  6. Call the main functions directly, e.g.
    params = GetBuildLibParams(out_dir, lib_name, fasta_dir)
    BuildSpecLib(params)
    params = GetSearchParams("library.poin", "ms_data", "results")
    SearchDIA(params)
SubcommandJulia function
params-predictGetBuildLibParams
predictBuildSpecLib
params-searchGetSearchParams
searchSearchDIA
convert-rawPioneerConverter
convert-mzmlconvertMzML
'note'

Revise enables hot reloading of code during development.

PioneerConverter

Detailed installation and usage instructions for PioneerConverter are available in its documentation.

Next Steps

After installation:

  1. Follow the Quick Start Tutorial.
  2. Generate parameter files with pioneer params-predict or pioneer params-search, then edit them according to Parameter Configuration.