The enhanced Python fork of JILL -- Julia Installer for Linux (MacOS, Windows and FreeBSD) -- Light

Why jill.py? Distro package managers (e.g., apt, pac, chocho) is likely to provide a broken Julia with incorrect binary dependencies (e.g., LLVM ) versions. Hence it's recommended to download and extract the Julia binary provided in Julia Downloads. jill.py doesn't do anything magical, but just makes such operation even stupid.

Using Python to install Julia? This is because Python has became one of the main tool for sys admins and it's available in all platforms; this makes a cross-platform installer for Julia possible.

Is it safe to use this? Yes, jill.py use GPG to check every tarballs after downloading. Also, *.dmg/*.pkg for macOS and .exe for Windows are already singed.

let's make a simple and stupid julia installer

• download Julia release from the nearest mirror server.
• immediately knows once there's a new Julia release.
• across multiple platforms.
• manage multiple julia releases.

First you'll need to install jill using pip: pip install jill --user -U

Note that Python >= 3.6 is required. For base docker images, you also need to make sure wget and gnupg are installed.

Basic usage:

jill install [version] [--confirm] [--upstream UPSTREAM] [--reinstall] [--install_dir INSTALL_DIR] [--symlink_dir SYMLINK_DIR]

For the first-time users of jill.py, you may need to modify PATH accordingly so that your shell can find the executables when you type julia.

installation demo

When you type jill install (the simplest usage), it does the following things:

1. query latest stable release, it's 1.4.2 at the time of writing.
2. download, verify and install julia 1.4.2
3. make alias: julia, julia-1, julia-1.4
   • for nightly build, it only bind alias to julia-latest

Valid version syntax:

• stable: latest stable release
• 1: latest stable 1.y.z release
• 1.2: latest stable 1.2.z release
• 1.2.3/1.2.3-rc1: as it is
• nightly/latest: nightly builds

Here's a list of slightly advanced usages that you may be interested in:

• download only:
  • latest stable release for current system: jill download
  • specific system: jill download --sys freebsd --arch x86_64
  • download Julia to specific dir: jill download --outdir another/dir
• install Julia for current system:
  • (linux only) system-wide for root: sudo jill install
  • upgrade from older julia version: jill install --upgrade (copy and paste the root environment folder)
  • don't need interactive promopt: jill install --confirm
• upstream:
  • from specific upstream: jill install --upstream Official
  • find out all registered upstreams: jill upstream
  • add a private upstream: make a modifed copy of public registry at:
    • Linux, MacOS and FreeBSD: ~/.config/jill/sources.json
    • Windows: ~/AppData/Local/julias/sources.json

You can find a more verbose documentation using jill [COMMAND] -h (e.g., jill download -h)

For Julia (>= 1.5.0) in Linux with musl dependency, you can

• install it normally, i.e., using jill install; jill knows that you're using musl.
• download it by passing --sys musl command. In the meantime, --sys linux will give you Julia binaries built with glibc dependency.

If you're tired of seeing (xx days old master) in your nightly build version, then jill can make your nightly build always the latest version using cron:

# /etc/cron.d/jill
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

# install a fresh nightly build every day
* 0 * * * root jill install latest --confirm

Similarly, you can also add a cron job for jill install --confirm so that you always get a latest stable release for julia. jill knows the existence of a new version of Julia once it's released -- you don't even need to upgrade jill.

This section is not for common jill.py users that simply wants to download and install Julia.

If it's an public mirror and you want to share it worldwide. You can add an entry to the public registry, make a PR, then I will tag a new release for that.

If it's an internal mirror and you don't plan to make it public, you can create a config file at ~/.config/jill/sources.json locally. The contents will be appended to the public registry and overwrite already existing items if there are.

In the registry config file, a new mirror is a dictionary in the upstream field:

• name: a distinguishable mirror name
• urls: URL template to retrive Julia release
• latest_urls: URL template to retrive the nightly build of Julia release

Placeholders are used to register new mirrors. For example, the stable release url of the "Official" release server provided by Julialang.org is "https://julialang-s3.julialang.org/bin/$sys/$arch/$minor_version/$filename"

There're several predefined placeholders for various systems and architectures:

• system: windows, macos, linux, freebsd
• sys: winnt, mac, linux, freebsd
• os: win, mac, linux, freebsd
• architecture: x86_64, i686, ARMv7, ARMv8
• arch: x86, x64, armv7l, aarch64
• osarch: win32, win64, mac64, linux-armv7l, linux-aarch64
• osbit: win32, win64, linux32, linux64, linuxaarch64
• bit: 32, 64
• extension: exe, tar.gz, dmg (no leading .)

There're also placeholders for versions:

• patch_version: 1.2.3, latest
• minor_version: 1.2, latest
• major_version: 1
• version: 1.2.3-pre, latest (no leading v)
• vpatch_version: v1.2.3, latest
• vminor_version: v1.2, latest
• vmajor_version: v1, latest

To keep consistent names with official releases, you can use predefined name placeholders:

• stable release filename: julia-$version-$osarch.$extension
• nightly release latest_filename: "julia-latest-$osbit.$extension"