Setting up Your Julia Environment¶

Contents¶

• Setting up Your Julia Environment
  • Overview
  • A Note on Jupyter
  • Desktop Installation of Julia and Jupyter
  • Using Julia on the Web
  • Installing Packages

Overview¶

In this lecture we will cover how to get up and running with Julia

There are a few different options for using Julia, including a local desktop installation and Jupyter hosted on the web

If you have access to a web-based Jupyter and Julia setup, it is typically the most straightforward way to get started

A Note on Jupyter¶

Like Python and R, and unlike products such as Matlab and Stata, there is a looser connection between Julia as a programming language and Julia as a specific development environment

While you will eventually use other editors, there are some advantages to starting with the Jupyter environment while learning Julia

• The ability to mix formatted text (including mathematical expressions) and code in a single document
• Nicely formatted output including tables, figures, animation, video, etc.
• Conversion tools to generate PDF slides, static HTML, etc.
• Online Jupyter may be available, and requires no installation

We’ll discuss the workflow on these features in the next lecture

Desktop Installation of Julia and Jupyter¶

If you want to install these tools locally on your machine

• Download and install Julia, from download page , accepting all default options

  • We do not recommend JuliaPro

• Open Julia, by either

  1. Navigating to Julia through your menus or desktop icons (Windows, Mac), or
  2. Opening a terminal and typing julia (Linux)

You should now be looking at something like this

This is called the JULIA REPL (Read-Evaluate-Print-Loop), which we discuss more later

• In the Julia REPL, hit ] to enter package mode and then enter

This adds packages for

• The IJulia kernel which links Julia to Jupyter (i.e., allows your browser to run Julia code, manage Julia packages, etc.)
• The InstantiateFromURL which is a tool written by the QE team to manage package dependencies for the lectures

Installing Jupyter¶

If you have previously installed Jupyter (e.g., installing Anaconda Python by downloading the binary https://www.anaconda.com/download/) then the add IJulia installs everything you need into your existing environment

Otherwise - or in addition - you can install it directly from the Julia REPL

Choose the default, y if asked to install Jupyter and then JupyterLab via Conda

After the installation, a JupyterLab tab should open in your browser

(Optional) To enable launching JupyterLab from a terminal, use add Julia’s Jupyter to your path

Starting Jupyter¶

Next, let’s install the QuantEcon lecture notes to our machine and run them (for more details on the tools we’ll use, see our lecture on version control)

1. Install git
2. (Optional, but strongly recommended) Install the GitHub Desktop

GitHub Desktop Approach¶

After installing the Git Desktop application, click this link on your desktop computer to automatically install the notebooks

It should open a window in the GitHub desktop app like this

Choose a path you like and clone the repo

Note: the workflow will be easiest if you clone the repo to the default location relative to the home folder for your user

From a Julia REPL, start JupyterLab by executing

Alternatively, if you installed Jupyter separately in Jupyter Installation or added Jupyter to your path then run jupyter lab in your terminal

Navigate to the location you stored the lecture notes, and open the Interacting with Julia notebook to explore this interface and start writing code

Git Command Line Approach¶

If you do not wish to install the GitHub Desktop, you can get the notebooks using the Git command-line tool

Open a new terminal session and run

This will download the repository with the notebooks in the working directory

Then, cd to that location in your Mac, Linux, or Windows PowerShell terminal

Then, either using the using IJulia; jupyterlab() or execute jupyter lab within your shell

And open the Interacting With Julia lecture (the file julia_environment.ipynb in the list of notebooks in JupyterLab) to continue

Using Julia on the Web¶

If you have access to an online Julia installation, it is the easiest way to get started

Eventually, you will want to do a local installation in order to use other tools and editors such as Atom/Juno, but don’t let the environment get in the way of learning the language

Using Julia with JupyterHub¶

If you have access to a web-based solution for Jupyter, then that is typically a straightforward option

• Students: ask your department if these resources are available
• Universities and workgroups: email contact@quantecon.org for help on setting up a shared JupyterHub instance with precompiled packages ready for these lecture notes
• JuliaBox tightly controls allowed packages, and does not currently support the QuantEcon lectures

Obtaining Notebooks¶

Your first step is to get a copy of the notebooks in your JupyterHub environment

While you can individually download the notebooks from the website, the easiest way to access the notebooks is usually to clone the repository with Git into your JupyterHub environment

JupyterHub installations have different methods for cloning repositories, with which you can use the url for the notebooks repository: https://github.com/QuantEcon/quantecon-notebooks-julia

Installing Packages¶

After you have some of the notebooks available, as in above, these lectures depend on functionality (like packages for plotting, benchmarking, and statistics) that are not installed with every Jupyter installation on the web

If your online Jupyter does not come with QuantEcon packages pre-installed, you can install the InstantiateFromURL package, which is a tool written by the QE team to manage package dependencies for the lectures

To add this package, in an online Jupyter notebook run (typically with <Shift-Enter>)

If your online Jupyter environment does not have the packages pre-installed, it may take 15-20 minutes for your first QuantEcon notebook to run

After this step, open the downloaded Interacting with Julia notebook to begin writing code

If the QuantEcon notebooks do not work after this installation step, you may need to speak to the JupyterHub administrator