I have to say that I find it frustrating that Julia defaults to updating the registry, and potentially updates all of my packages (if new versions are available, which is often the case) whenever I want to install a single new package. I really only want it to update if I specifically run pkg> update — otherwise, Julia should assume I’m happy with the versions I currently have.
A workaround that does what I want is to put
Pkg.UPDATED_REGISTRY_THIS_SESSION[] = true
in your ~/.julia/config/startup.jl, but I wish this was the default.