Installing and configuring Julia and Pluto

What it does

Julia is a modern programming language that is especially effective for machine learning, image processing and working with text in Unicode – all tasks that are releveant to the HMT project.

Pluto is an interactive notebook system, writting in Julia. We use Pluto notebooks for automated validation and computer-assisted verification of our editorial work.

Install and configure Julia and Pluto

Install the Julia language

Install Pluto

  1. use the Julia icon to start a new Julia session
  2. At the julia> prompt, type ]. The prompt will change to pkg> to indicate you’re in “package” mode, where you can manage the packages in your installation of Julia.
  3. Enter add Pluto to add the Pluto package. This will take a long time! Don’t worry about it: you won’t have to repeat this.
  4. When job has finished and you see the pkg> prompt again, hit delete or backspace to go back to the julia> prompt.
  5. At the julia> prompt, enter using Pluto. The first time you do this, Julia will need to build the entire Pluto notebook system so this, too, will take a long time. Don’t worry about this, eiether: you won’t have to build Pluto from scratch again.
  6. At the julia> prompt, enter Pluto.run(). The first time you do this, Julia will need to build a few additional items, and this will not be fast. Don’t worry: it will be much faster when you use Pluto notebooks ever after. At the end of this process, Julia will open a new window in your default web browser connected to your Pluto notebook server.
  7. In the Julia window where you are running the Pluto server, type control-C to stop the server, and enter exit() to quit Julia.

Testing your installation

You know you’ve done your job right when you can repeat the process at will. Test your installation:

  1. Open Julia
  2. At the julia> prompt, type using Pluto
  3. At the julia> prompt, type Pluto.run()
  4. Follow one of the links in the browser window that opens.