Julia

Julia

Container definition files for using the Julia programming langauge.

• Adding packages to base Julia

These containers use the official Julia containers provided on DockerHub.

How to install packages

There are two ways that you can pass Julia commands in the %post section of the definition file.

1. Single line command

You can pass a command directly to Julia for execution using the syntax

    julia -e 'command to execute'

For example,

    jullia -e 'using Pkg; Pkg.add("Cowsay"); Pkg.instantiate(); Pkg.precompile()'

installs the Cowsay package. This approach is useful for simple commands.

2. Create an install script

You can create a short install script written in Julia that you can execute when building the container.

For example,

    cat << EOF > /opt/install.jl
using Pkg
Pkg.add("Cowsay")
Pkg.instantiate()
Pkg.precompile()

EOF

    julia /opt/install.jl

The lines between cat << EOF and EOF will be written to /opt/install.jl, which you can execute using julia.

Note that the second EOF must be at the beginning of the line.

Choosing the version of Julia

These recipes are based on the official Julia container images on DockerHub: https://hub.docker.com/_/julia. Generally, you can edit the From: line of the definition file to specifiy the version you want to use. For example, using

# Apptainer .def file
From: julia:1.8
# Dockerfile
FROM julia:1.8

will build a container with Julia version 1.8.

Choosing the base operating system

You can also specify the base operating system for the containr. For example, to install packages for Julia 1.8 in an Alpine Linux container, you would use

# Apptainer .def file
From: julia:1.10-alpine
# Dockerfile
FROM julia:1.10-alpine

For a list of the available operating systems, see the overview at https://hub.docker.com/_/julia.