I had a different scenario in mind: I have a Julia application that I want others to use (non-Julia-devs). Currently, I just refer potential users to the “manual installers” page, specifying to install the latest LTS for their OS.
Compare this to potential juliaup-based instructions in this scenario… It would be quite a sequence of steps: (1) install Juliaup (2) remove whatever Julia version it installed by default (3) install the required version (4) make it the default. Why would anyone prefer this for endusers?
At least if you’re using VS Code then we can automate most of this for you. Put julia +1.10 (or whatever channel you need) into the workspace settings and it should basically be a one-click installation of juliaup and the required channels.
IME, directing users to the “manual installer” page works quite well. The only issue I saw is that sometimes somebody installs a wrong Julia version by accident – and the failure mode is quite bad, the terminal gets overloaded with long scary error messages. But otherwise things have been going smoothly.
OK, I’m starting to understand this better now. I was initially rather confused about your user-vs-dev breakdown, but I think I’m now getting it. Rather than thinking about who’s at the keyboard, I think it might be more helpful to think about the use-case — and the places where folks seem to struggle the most with with juliaup is when they just want to run some .jl file. Or perhaps even worse, double-click something that happens to execute julia script.jl. Or run some Pluto notebook.
And so this is precisely how rustup and juliaup diverge. It’s not so much about distribution of Julia itself as it is about distribution of an “executable” (or script or notebook or something) that depends upon julia. The expectations of those two use-cases are wildly different.
Yes, sorry for the potential confusion I really mean this distinction as “someone who writes Julia code” vs “someone who runs Julia code, but doesn’t really write it”.
And (arguably?) we want the latter group to grow over time.
Isn’t Juliaup installable through the windows store, Julia - Free download and install on Windows | Microsoft Store (perhaps the install page should make this more obvious?). Is this not the simplest way to install for non technical windows users? Maybe I missed someone discussing it earlier in the thread.
Lots of companies disable access to the Windows Store on their networks/computers, even if employees have non-admin install permissions. So other easy, reliable options must exist.
Indeed, thanks for linking!
Although note that at least some key points from those messages do exist already:
This is literally the current standalone installer
That’s why I was really surprised to see that the standalone installer is heavily advised against, according to the official Julia install webpage (haven’t really read that page in a while). It’s clearly the easiest option for the most basic – and arguably the most common – scenario. And I’m saying this as a juliaup user: it’s a nice tool, but for more advanced usecases.
Just my 2 cent: for Windows users who can’t install juliaup through the Microsoft Store (e.g. if your organization blocks access to it), you can try installing it with Scoop instead: Scoop
