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

download and install the “current stable release” of Julia for your operating system.

Install Pluto

use the Julia icon to start a new Julia session
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.
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.
When job has finished and you see the pkg> prompt again, hit delete or backspace to go back to the julia> prompt.
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.
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.
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:

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