I tested it here in 1.9+ series, and it worked. Also because this involves large packages, having that in a specific environment will make the usage of the packages much smoother. What I did is:
% mkdir naceur
% cd naceur
% juila
julia> activate .
naceur> add ... packages
julia> # ... run everything
ps: I did the same thing in 1.8.5 and it worked here, so I cannot help with the specific bug you are having, rather than suggesting a clean new environment as I did.