Juliaup - Julia version manager

This repository contains a cross-platform installer for the Julia programming language.

The installer also bundles a full Julia version manager called juliaup. One can use juliaup to install specific Julia versions, it alerts users when new Julia versions are released and provides a convenient Julia release channel abstraction.

Status

The Windows version of this installer is considered production ready. The Linux and Mac versions are prerelease versions that should not be used in production environments.

Installation

On all platforms it is recommended that you first uninstall any previous Julia versions and undo any modifications you might have made to put julia on the PATH before you install Julia with the installer in this repository.

Windows

On Windows Julia and Juliaup can be installed directly from the Windows store here. One can also install exactly the same version by executing

winget install julia -s msstore

on a command line.

If the Windows Store is blocked on a system, we have an alternative MSIX App Installer based setup. Note that this is currently experimental, please report back successes and failures here. To use the App Installer version, download this file and open it by double clicking on it.

Mac and Linux

Juliaup can be installed on Linux or Mac by executing

curl -fsSL https://install.julialang.org | sh

in a shell. Note that the Mac and Linux version are considered prerelease, have known bugs and might often break.

If using Juliaup in an automated script, you can skip user prompts by using the unix tool expect:

expect -c 'spawn bash -c "curl -fsSL https://install.julialang.org | sh"; expect "Proceed"; send -- "\r"; expect eof'

Software Repositories

Important note: As of now, we strongly recommend to install Juliaup via the curl command above rather than through OS-specific software repositories (see below) as the Juliaup variants provided by the latter currently have some drawbacks (that we hope to lift in the future).

Homebrew

brew install juliaup

Arch Linux - AUR

On Arch Linux, Juliaup is available in the Arch User Repository (AUR).

openSUSE Tumbleweed

On openSUSE Tumbleweed, Juliaup is available. To install, run with root privileges:

zypper install juliaup

Using Juliaup

Once you have installed Juliaup, julia is on the PATH, and on Windows there is a start menu shortcut and it will show up as a profile in Windows Terminal. Any of those will start Julia. The VS Code extension will also automatically find this Julia installation.

Here are some of the things you can do with juliaup:

• juliaup list lists all the available channels.
• juliaup update installs the latest available Julia version for all your channels.
• juliaup update release updates the release channel to the latest version.
• juliaup status shows you which Julia versions you have installed and which one is configured as the default.
• juliaup add 1.5.1 adds Julia 1.5.1 to your system (it can then be launched via the command julia +1.5.1).
• juliaup default 1.5.3 configures the julia command to start Julia 1.5.3.
• juliaup default 1.6 configures the julia command to start the latest 1.6.x version of Julia you have installed on your system (and inform you if there is a newer version in 1.6.x available).
• juliaup default release configures the julia command to start the latest stable version of Julia (this is also the default value).
• juliaup remove 1.5.3 deletes Julia 1.5.3 from your system.
• juliaup add 1.6.1~x86 installs the 32 bit version of Julia 1.6.1 on your system.
• juliaup default 1.6~x86 configures the julia command to start the latest 1.6.x 32 bit version of Julia you have installed on your system.
• juliaup link dev ~/juliasrc/julia configures the dev channel to use a binary that you provide that is located at ~/juliasrc/julia. You can then use dev as if it was a system provided channel, i.e. make it the default or use it with the + version selector. You can use other names than dev and link as many versions into juliaup as you want.
• juliaup self update installs the latest version, which is necessary if new releases reach the beta channel, etc.
• juliaup self uninstall uninstalls Juliaup. Note that on some platforms this command is not available, in those situations one should use platform specific methods to uninstall Juliaup.
• juliaup shows you what other commands are available.

The available system provided channels are:

• release: always points to the latest stable version.
• lts: always points to the latest long term supported version.
• beta: always points to the latest beta version if one exists. If a newer release candidate exists, it will point to that, and if there is neither a beta or rc candidate available it will point to the same version as the release channel.
• rc: same as beta, but only starts with release candidate versions.
• specific versions, e.g. 1.5.4.
• minor version channels, e.g. 1.5.
• major version channels, e.g. 1.

All of these channels can be combined with the ~x86, ~x64 or ~aarch64 suffix to download a specific platform version.

Using installed julia versions

To launch the default Julia version simply run julia in your terminal.

To launch a specific Julia version, say in channel release, run julia +release.

Juliaup server

Juliaup by default downloads julia binary tarballs from the official server "https://julialang-s3.julialang.org". If requested, the environment variable JULIAUP_SERVER can be used to tell Juliaup to use a third-party mirror server.

Development guides

For juliaup developers, information on how to build juliaup locally, update julia versions, and release updates can be found in the wiki https://github.com/JuliaLang/juliaup/wiki

To use unstable preview versions of juliaup (e.g. to gt a patch before it makes it into the latest release), use

curl -fsSL https://install.julialang.org/releasepreview | sh

More information

This JuliaCon 2021 talk is a short introduction to Juliaup. Note that the video was recorded before the Linux and Mac versions were finished, but all the information about juliaup itself applies equally on Linux and Mac.

This JuliaCon 2022 talk provides some background on the design of Juliaup.