⬇️ Installing POKY

Download POKY

All distributions are available from the official POKY releases page. Download the appropriate archive for your platform:

🍎 macOS Installation

1. Download and unzip poky_mac.zip.
2. Install XQuartz 2.8.6 or newer from xquartz.org. POKY requires XQuartz to display its X11 interface.
3. Run the installer utility: locate and double-click poky_macinstall.command inside the unzipped folder. It will deploy POKY to /Applications.
4. If macOS Gatekeeper blocks execution, go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → General and click Open Anyway.
5. Grant Full Disk Access to poky.app and XQuartz.app under Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access. Depending on your setup, the following components may also need access: sh, launchd_startx, PokyAnalyzer.app, easy_ucsfdata.app, ndpplot.app.

softwareupdate --install-rosetta

sudo spctl --master-disable

🪟 Windows Installation

1. Download and extract poky_win.zip to a clean directory, e.g. C:\poky_win.
2. Ensure the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable is installed on your system (available from Microsoft's website if not already present).
3. Run the configuration script: poky_wininstall.bat inside the extracted folder.
4. Launch POKY using the batch script:

   C:\poky_win\bin\poky.bat

🐧 Linux Installation

Step 1 — Install system dependencies

Ubuntu / Debian-based:

sudo apt install libxcb*-dev libcanberra-gtk-module

RedHat / Fedora / RHEL-based:

sudo dnf install libxcb*-devel xcb-util-*-devel libXrender-devel \
  libxkbcommon*-devel libXi-devel libdrm-devel libXcursor-devel \
  libXcomposite-devel libpng15

Step 2 — Extract and install

unzip poky_linux.zip
cd poky_linux
./poky_linuxinstall.sh

Step 3 — Launch POKY

poky_linux/bin/poky.sh

For convenience, add an alias to your .bashrc or .bash_aliases:

alias poky='~/poky_linux/bin/poky.sh'

📦 HPC / Container (Singularity / Apptainer)

For high-performance computing clusters or older Linux environments, use the Apptainer/Singularity container.

Step 1 — Download the container definition

wget https://poky.clas.ucdenver.edu/poky_releases/poky.def

Step 2 — Build the container image

With root privileges:

apptainer build poky.sif poky.def

Without root (standard user):

apptainer build --fakeroot poky.sif poky.def

Step 3 — Run the container

apptainer run --writable /path/to/poky.sif

X11 Display Issues

If the graphical window fails to open:

xhost +local:apptainer

🔧 Troubleshooting

Acknowledgements & License

POKY is developed by Prof. Woonghee Lee and the POKY Team at the University of Colorado Denver.

POKY is a successor to:

• UCSF-SPARKY — developed by Donald Kneller and Tom Goddard at UCSF (T.D. Goddard and D.G. Kneller, SPARKY 3, University of California, San Francisco).
• NMRFAM-SPARKY — developed by Woonghee Lee at the National Magnetic Resonance Facility at Madison (NMRFAM).