Installing Julia

There are a number of methods available to install Julia that each have their own advantages:

Note

It is NOT recommended to install Julia from your distribution's package manager, as no such installation is officially endorsed by the Julia project and thus may be out-of-date and broken/unmaintained!

juliaup (recommended)

juliaup is a Julia manager/version multiplexer tool designed to handle your Julia installation from the command-line. It is the easiest and most convenient installation option, and is available on almost all platforms that support Julia.

If you are running Linux or Mac, enter the following command in your terminal:

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

If you are running Windows, enter the following:

winget install julia -s msstore

If you have the Rust programming language installed on your machine, you can install juliaup via the Cargo package manager:

Warning

This is not a recommended option as this will involve compiling the actual juliaup executable on your machine

cargo install juliaup

You can use the first and last commands listed to install Julia via juliaup in a container (see Docker/Podman below)

Docker/Podman

An official Docker image is available, allowing you to build containers with Julia already installed. This can be a preferred method of installation if you wish to test out Julia in a sandboxed, ephemeral (temporary) instance or are looking to include Julia in a containerized application.

You must first download the image via the Docker or Podman command-line tool:

Note

If you are using Podman, you can replace the keyword docker with podman in any of the following commands!

docker pull julia:latest

You can specify which version of the image you wish to install via tags, such as latest, rc, 1.6, etc.

To create a container instance, run the following command:

Note

You may skip the previous step if you have not already downloaded the image, Docker/Podman will automatically begin installing it for you here!

docker run -it --rm --network host julia:latest

The above command creates an interactive container that will be deleted the moment you exit via the --rm option and that will also share the same network namespace as your machine via the --network host option (allow for automatic port bindings). You may remove either option to disable their respective behaviours.

The image itself can serve as a base for your custom container built from a Dockerfile/Containerfile:

FROM julia:latest
# ...

If you wish to use a different image as the basis of your container, yet still require Julia, you can use any of the other installation methods listed in this section in your Dockerfile/Containerfile. A few examples with juliaup:

# First option: Install juliaup via curl
FROM ubuntu:latest

RUN apt update && \
    apt install -y curl && \
    curl -fsSL https://install.julialang.org | sh -s -- -y # install juliaup non-interactively

RUN juliaup add release

# Second option: install juliaup in a Rust image (not recommended)
FROM rust:latest

RUN cargo install juliaup

Direct download

You can also install Julia as a downloadable executable from the Julia website's Download section. You must make sure to install the correct Julia build for your machine based on:

native instruction set (x86_64, i686, ARM, Apple Silicon, PowerPC)
operating system type (Windows, MacOS, Linux (Glibc), Linux (Musl), FreeBSD)
bit compute type (32-bit, 64-bit)
desired level of support (Tier 1 (guaranteed to build and pass all tests) through Tier 4)

Make sure to follow the exact installation steps for your machine in order to ensure the best experience.

Build from source

For building/testing purposes, you may build Julia from the source code that is fully available in the Julia GitHub repository. Simply enter git clone https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia.git to copy the entire source on your machine, create a new git branch via git checkout -b name-of-branch, add your modifications, and run make to start the Makefile build.