Julia Installation Instructions for PC Windows

Installation of Julia

• Download the latest Julia release (currently v1.0.3) at https://julialang.org/downloads

• Choose the 64-bit Windows Self-Extracting Archive

• Follow the instructions to install the software

• Create a shortcut on the Desktop

• Open the shortcut on the Desktop to start Julia in a terminal Window:

Testing Julia

• For fun you can now try some simple Julia commands directly in the terminal

• For example, use it as a calculator

julia> 123 / 234
0.5256410256410257

julia> sqrt(sin(1.0)^2)
0.8414709848078965

• Or try a simple “Hello world” program:

julia> for i = 1:5
           println("Hello world")
       end
Hello world
Hello world
Hello world
Hello world
Hello world

Package installation

• Install the a commonly used packages: First PyPlot for plotting:

import Pkg
Pkg.add("PyPlot")

• This will download the package and install it (take quite some time, but you only have to do this once)

• When finished, install some more packages:

Pkg.add("DifferentialEquations")
Pkg.add("Juno")

• Finally, you can precompile the PyPlot package since that takes a while too:

using PyPlot

Testing packages

• Try to create a simple plot using the PyPlot package

using PyPlot

x = 0:0.01:10;
y = @. sin(x^2 / 5);

plot(x,y);
grid()

• This should open a separate window with a graph of the function

Installing Atom and Juno

• If you already have a text-editor that you like, you are basically done. You can then try to create a file test.jl (using e.g. the Julia example above), and run it in Julia using include("test.jl"). You might need to specify the working directory for Julia if it cannot find the file.

• Alternatively, install the Atom editor with (optionally) the Juno package for Julia support according to below

• First download the latest version of Atom at https://atom.io

• After installation, start Atom and it will show a “Welcome Guide”. Choose “Install a Package” and click “Open Installer”. Type “juno” in the search box, and your first match should be a package named uber-juno. Install the package.

• You should now get a “Julia” menu option. Choose Julia / Settings…

• Make the following changes under "UI Options:
  • For “Result Display Mode”, choose “Display results in the console”
  • For “Documentation Display Mode”, choose “Show documentation in the editor”
  • Uncheck “Enable Toolbar” (takes space and not useful)
  • Uncheck “Enable Plot Pane” (does not work so well with PyPlot)

• Restart Atom

• You are now all set to run Julia. You might want to configure the panes, learn about keyboard shortcuts, etc.

• In the Julia console, you can press enter to start Julia

• To try the editor, create a file test.jl and copy/paste the plotting example from above into the editor window

• Press Ctrl-Shift-Enter in the editor to run these commands, and confirm that it creates a plot in a separate window