Prompts that do not accept the labeled responses nor the default

General Usage
1

Why does this happen?
julia> using Plots, Interact │ Packages [Plots, Interact] not found, but packages named [Plots, Interact] are available from a registry. │ Install packages? │ (@v1.12) pkg> add Plots Interact └ (y/n/o) [y]: Selection not recognized
No matter if I type y{enter}
or just {enter} or ‘n’ or ‘o’ and {enter}
always the same response “Selection not recognized”?

2 Likes
2

That’s unusual. I’ve never encountered that error. However, note that version 1.12 of Julia has not been officially released yet, so I would recommend using version 1.11 for now. If switching to version 1.11 does not fix it, it’s possible that there might be an issue with your Julia installation or your Julia environment.

1 Like
3

Anticipating this objection:

               _
   _       _ _(_)_     |  Documentation: https://docs.julialang.org
  (_)     | (_) (_)    |
   _ _   _| |_  __ _   |  Type "?" for help, "]?" for Pkg help.
  | | | | | | |/ _` |  |
  | | |_| | | | (_| |  |  Version 1.11.5 (2025-04-14)
 _/ |\__'_|_|_|\__'_|  |  Official https://julialang.org/ release
|__/                   |

julia> using Plots #, Interact
 │ Package Plots not found, but a package named Plots is available from a registry.
 │ Install package?
 │   (@v1.11) pkg> add Plots
 └ (y/n/o) [y]: y
Selection not recognized
ERROR: ArgumentError: Package Plots not found in current path.
- Run `import Pkg; Pkg.add("Plots")` to install the Plots package.
Stacktrace:
 [1] macro expansion
...
4

FWIW Looks like this: When pasting multiple lines including `using` of new packages, install prompt clobbered · Issue #47944 · JuliaLang/julia · GitHub

5

I wouldn’t expect that to change anything about Selection not recognized, usually packages would install just fine even if their code is broken by changes to their dependencies (including base Julia). I’ve seriously never seen that message and Google is coming up with nothing except this thread, so I’d like to know what that is, too. Installing Plots or Interact worked on both v1.11.5 and v1.12.0-beta3 for me, here’s what that looks like:

   _       _ _(_)_     |  Documentation: https://docs.julialang.org
  (_)     | (_) (_)    |
   _ _   _| |_  __ _   |  Type "?" for help, "]?" for Pkg help.
  | | | | | | |/ _` |  |
  | | |_| | | | (_| |  |  Version 1.12.0-beta3 (2025-05-12)
 _/ |\__'_|_|_|\__'_|  |  Official https://julialang.org release
|__/                   |

julia> using Interact
 │ Package Interact not found, but a package named Interact is available from a
 │ registry.
 │ Install package?
 │   (@v1.12) pkg> add Interact
 └ (y/n/o) [y]: y
   Resolving package versions...
   Installed ColorTypes ─ v0.11.5
   Installed Colors ───── v0.12.11
...
  [cc8bc4a8] + Widgets v0.6.7
  [8ba89e20] + Distributed v1.11.0
        Info Packages marked with ⌃ and ⌅ have new versions available. Those with ⌃ may be upgradable, but those with ⌅ are restricted by compatibility constraints from upgrading. To see why use `status --outdated -m`
Precompiling Interact finished.
  14 dependencies successfully precompiled in 32 seconds. 54 already precompiled.
  1 dependency had output during precompilation:
┌ WebSockets
│  WARNING: Imported binding Logging.termlength was undeclared at import time during import to WebSockets.
│  WARNING: Imported binding Logging.showvalue was undeclared at import time during import to WebSockets.
└

I did get a couple warnings at the end there (it’s a v1.12 change regarding imports of names that weren’t declared as variables), but that’s to be expected from trying to mix a package release from 2022 with a 2025 version of Julia. That doesn’t guarantee it can’t work today, but it’s definitely one of the stronger warnings so it’s probably better to use the versions at the time.