Set up Julia for a novice

General Usage
1

I’d like to write a script that installs a few packages, does using to trigger compilation, and replies yes to all questions. Is there a way to do this? What I’d like to do is something like

for pack in [FFTW, SparseSuite, PyPlot, IJulia]
Pkg.add(string(pack))
using pack
replay "y" to all questions
end

I have no idea how to begin. Even without the reply "y" part, I’m having trouble with looping over a list of packages and doing both add (which uses a string) and using (which does not).

2

Why not just instantiate an environment?

1 Like
3

I’m still a confused. I’d like to do this in the default environment. Do I write a script to do this? I’d like the user to have to do as little as possible.

My target user will be reading instructions from a web page and not local to my workplace, so I can’t do this myself and send them a .julia tarball.

4

you can put the Manifest.toml and Project.toml into the default environment folder

5

OK. So when my customer puts the .toml files into a newly created .julia directory and starts Juila, will the packages automatically be added? Do I still have to tell them to do

using XXX
for all packages and reply “y” to any questions?

6

They will need to run Pkg.instantiate(). Notice that you can easily test these scenarios yourself. This gives you a pristine Julia depot unrelated to whatever you have in your .julia:

$ mkdir /tmp/testdepot
$ JULIA_DEPOT_PATH=/tmp/testdepot julia
               _
   _       _ _(_)_     |  Documentation: https://docs.julialang.org
  (_)     | (_) (_)    |
   _ _   _| |_  __ _   |  Type "?" for help, "]?" for Pkg help.
  | | | | | | |/ _` |  |
  | | |_| | | | (_| |  |  Version 1.8.0 (2022-08-17)
 _/ |\__'_|_|_|\__'_|  |  Official https://julialang.org/ release
|__/                   |

(@v1.8) pkg> st
  Installing known registries into `/tmp/testdepot`
Status `/tmp/testdepot/environments/v1.8/Project.toml` (empty project)
4 Likes
7

That’ll work, but it’s a bit more effort from my customers than I’d like.

8

There is a way to do what you asked for:

import Pkg
Pkg.activate("project_for_ctkelley_tutorial", shared=true)
for pack in [:FFTW, :SuiteSparse, :PyPlot, :IJulia]
    Pkg.add(string(pack))
    @eval using $pack
end

I took the liberty of adding Pkg.activate("project_for_ctkelley_tutorial", shared=true) so that your users won’t have to deal with a default environment with long precompile times down the line.

4 Likes
9

That does it. Thanks!