# Portable installation of Julia?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/portable-installation-of-julia/21097>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [February 22, 2019, 9:13pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/portable-installation-of-julia/21097 "2019-02-22T21:13:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![outlace](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/outlace/32/2216_2.png) [@outlace](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/outlace)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2019, 9:13pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/portable-installation-of-julia/21097/1 "2019-02-22T21:13:41Z")

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I want to use Julia on my poorly HD endowed Macbook Air but with all packages and whatnot it takes up several gigabytes. Can I install everything on an external hard drive and have a portable installation of Julia? I can host the Julia.app on an eHD but it still installs .julia and other hidden folders on my system drive.

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**Author:** ![00vareladavid](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/00vareladavid/32/23521_2.png) [@00vareladavid](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/00vareladavid)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2019, 9:34pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/portable-installation-of-julia/21097/2 "2019-02-22T21:34:05Z")

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The “.julia” folder is called a **depot**. You can control the set of depots with `DEPOT_PATH`. It should be enough to `pushfirst!(DEPOT_PATH, "/path/to/drive/julia_depot")` in your `startup.jl` file.

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**Author:** ![StefanKarpinski](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/stefankarpinski/32/24_2.png) [@StefanKarpinski](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/StefanKarpinski)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2019, 11:04pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/portable-installation-of-julia/21097/3 "2019-02-22T23:04:23Z")

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Note, however, that some packages have a build step and depending on what the build step does, the resulting build artifacts may not be relocatable because they have absolute paths baked into them. If, however, you always mount the external HD at the same location on different systems then they should still work fine.