Installing and Running Julia

This notebook describes the installation process for various components of the software.

Competences

The reader will be able to install Julia and all its components, to run Julia and start IJulia.

Installing Python and Jupyter

To install and use IJulia you need to install Python and Jupyter:

download and install Anaconda and follow the instructions - this installs Python (be sure to choose version 3.5) and most popular Python packages, including IPython.

Alternatively, you can follow the instructions on the Jupyter Installation page.

Installing Julia

To install Julia download andextract prebuilt binary for your operating system - see Downloads.

If you have sufficient expertise, you can download the Julia source and compiling it yourself - see Source Download and Compilation. You can also install the current Nigtly Build, but are adviced against it.

After instalation, you can start Julia in terminal mode by clicking its icon.

Installing and running `IJulia`

Do the following:

start Julia in terminal mode

at the julia prompt type

Pkg.add("IJulia")
using IJulia
notebook()

This opens IJulia window in your browser. (The first two commands need to be executed only the first time!). Semi-colon is the shell escape symbol, so, for example ; ls gives directory listing.

Later, you can also start IJulia by executing command

jupyter notebook

in the command prompt.

Remarks

In Linux, packges are installed in the directory $HOME/.julia/v0.6/.

In Windows (10), you will have Julia icon which starts Julia command window. Julia is installed in the directory (AppData is a hidden directory):

\Users\your_user_name\AppData\Local\Julia-0.6.2

The packages are installed in a directory \Users\your_user_name\.julia\v0.6 In Julia, current path and directory listing are obtained by Julia commands pwd() and readdir(), respectively.

Prior to executing notebook() command, you can use shell commands in Julia prompt to change directory, something like

; cd ../../my_julia_directory`