Setting up Julia Environment (Windows)¶

Marc Brittain and Xuxi Yang¶

1. Download Julia version 0.5¶

  • Make sure to download Julia 0.5 and not the newer version: Julia 0.6. Some of the modules are not yet compatible with 0.6
  • Follow this link to download a copy of Julia 0.5: Julia 0.5
  • Install like any other program and you should be able to run basic commands in the Julia interpreter that appears once the installation finishes

2. Jupyter Notebooks¶

  • Next it is time to install the Jupyter notebook extension to Julia. The recommended way to install Jupyter notebooks is to first install Anaconda. Installing Anaconda will also install a copy of Python onto your device. Although you may not explicitly use python, Julia can use different python functions so it is important to have it installed
  • Follow this link to download a copy of Anaconda (Choose python 3.6 option): Anaconda
  • After you have installed Anaconda, it is time to make Jupyter compatible with Julia. To do this, open the Julia either from desktop or the Start menu, and a window with a >julia prompt will appear.

  • Run the following code to install Jupyter (it will take you some time for the installation):

      julia> Pkg.add("IJulia")

  • Once the above command is finished, you can try the following code to see if Jupyter is installed properly:

      julia> using IJulia
  julia> notebook()
  • This should open a jupyter notebook browser in the current directory. If this doesn't work, jupyter may not be installed correctly
  • [Note]: I advise creating a new folder to store julia notebooks and if you work in python create a different folder for python. This will help down the road for navigating and organizing work

3. Download course code¶

  • Download and unzip the aere504-notebook directory: aere504-notebook-archive.zip from the blackboard or from the following link: GitHub
  • Once you have downloaded the course code, move that folder into the julia folder that was created in step 2

  • In Julia, run the install script to install all dependencies, replacing {PATH_TO_AERE504_NOTEBOOK} with the path to the aere504-notebook directory:

      julia> include("{PATH_TO_AERE504_NOTEBOOK}/install.jl")

  • Run jupyter in the aere504-notebook directory

      julia> using IJulia 
  julia> notebook(dir=“{PATH_TO_AERE504_NOTEBOOK}”)

  • This will take some time to run but will install the modules needed for the course code

4. Troubleshooting¶

  • Problems installing jupyter:
    If you see "ERROR: ArgumentError: 'U:.julia\v0.5\REQUIRE' exists.", you need to uninstall Julia and delete all the relevant files completely, i.e. search "Julia" in C:\ and U:\ and delete all the files and folders relevant to Julia.