New problem for Pkg.update() with proxy/antivirus

General Usage
1

Hi,

I use Julia behind a firewall and since a few days I cannot do Pkg.update() anymore (even with a clean environment with no dependencies) .

The command stalls at 49.9 % and finally times out.

Capture d’écran du 2026-04-24 16-30-08
Capture d’écran du 2026-04-24 16-30-082260×1337 273 KB

I wonder if this is due to an evolution of

  • the antivirus (mcafee web gateway ?)
  • the Julia package manager (or storage)

A friend did investigate a bit and reported to me that it may be related to a specific extension of some downloaded file (.tar.zst) that may be problematic for the anti-virus.

https://storage.julialang.net/registry/23338594-aafe-5451-b93e-139f81909106/bafdb285267cf95b18b7c9f11d60266a773dbef3.tar.zst

He also reported that the Pkg.update() seems to be OK if one uses:
export JULIA_PKG_SERVER=https://staging.pkg.julialang.org

Any hint would be very appreciated :slight_smile:

2

No one has a clue :cry: ?

3

My company’s proxy administrator added julialang.net to the list of allowed sites to bypass the antivirus, and that solved the problem. However, he still doesn’t know why it stopped working in the first place.

4

From the error message it looks like the download of a specific URL, containing a compressed tar archive of the General registry, was blocked by the antivirus, either indefinitely or with a lag of more than 20 seconds.

I don’t think it’s possible to say anything more from the Julia side of things.

5

Thank you for the explanation !
I still wonder if something has changed on the Julia side or on the antivirus side…

6

The Julia registry slowly grows over time but I don’t think there have been any recent format changes, at least not affecting Julia 1.12.