This file describes how to install, or build, and use Julia on Windows. For more general information about Julia, please see the main README or the documentation.
The built-in Windows fonts have rather poor coverage of the Unicode character space.
The free DejaVu Sans Mono
font can be used as a replacement font in the Windows console.
Since Windows 2000, simply downloading the font and installing it is insufficient, since Windows keeps a list of approved fonts in the registry.
Instructions for adding fonts to the terminal are available at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q247815
Additionally, rather than sticking with the default command prompt, you may want to use a different terminal emulator program, such as Conemu
or Mintty
(note that running Julia on Mintty needs a copy of stty.exe
in your %PATH%
to work properly).
Alternatively, you may prefer the features of a more full-function IDE, such as Juno
, LightTable
, Sublime-IJulia
, or IJulia
.
Julia runs on Windows XP-SP2 and later (including Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8). Both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions are supported. The 32-bit (i686) binary will run on either a 32-bit and 64-bit operating system. The 64-bit (x86_64) binary will only run on 64-bit Windows and will otherwise refuse to launch.
-
Download and install 7-Zip. Install the full program, not just the command line version.
-
Download the latest version of Julia. Extract the binary to a reasonable destination folder, e.g.
C:\julia
. -
Double-click the file
julia.bat
to launch Julia.
Julia uses binary-mode files exclusively. Unlike many other Windows programs, if you write '\n' to a file, you get a '\n' in the file, not some other bit pattern. This matches the behavior exhibited by other operating systems. If you have installed msysGit, it is suggested, but not required, that you configure your system msysGit to use the same convention:
git config --global core.eol lf
git config --global core.autocrlf input
or edit %USERPROFILE%\.gitconfig
and add/edit the lines:
[core] eol = lf
autocrlf = input
- Windows 10: supported (32 and 64 bits)
- Windows 8: supported (32 and 64 bits)
- Windows 7: supported (32 and 64 bits)
- Windows Vista: not officially supported (but probably works anyways)
- Windows XP: not officially supported (but may work anyways)
The instructions in this section were tested with the latest versions of all packages specified as of 2014-02-28.
-
Install 7-Zip.
-
Install Python 2.x. Do not install Python 3.
-
Install CMake.
-
Install MinGW-builds, a Windows port of GCC, as follows. Do not use the regular MinGW distribution.
-
Download the MinGW-builds installer.
-
Run the installer. When prompted, choose: - Version: the most recent version (these instructions were tested with 4.8.1) - Architecture:
x32
orx64
as appropriate and desired. - Threads:win32
(not posix) - Exception:sjlj
(for x32) orseh
(for x64). Do not choose dwarf2. - Build revision: most recent available (tested with 5) -
Do not install to a directory with spaces in the name. You will have to change the default installation path, for example, -
C:\mingw-builds\x64-4.8.1-win32-seh-rev5
for 64 bits -C:\mingw-builds\x32-4.8.1-win32-sjlj-rev5
for 32 bits -
Install and configure MSYS2, a minimal POSIX-like environment for Windows.
-
Download the latest base 32-bit or 64-bit distribution, consistent with the architecture you chose for MinGW-builds. The archive will have a name like
msys2-base-x86_64-yyyymmdd.tar.xz
and these instructions were tested withmsys2-base-x86_64-20140216.tar.xz
. -
Using 7-Zip, extract the archive to any convenient directory. - N.B. Some versions of this archive contain zero-byte files that clash with existing files. If prompted, choose not to overwrite existing files. - You may need to extract the tarball in a separate step. This will create an
msys32
ormsys64
directory, according to the architecture you chose. - Move themsys32
ormsys64
directory into your MinGW-builds directory, which isC:\mingw-builds
if you followed the suggestions in step 3. We will omit the "32" or "64" in the steps below and refer to this as "the msys directory". -
Double-click
msys2_shell.bat
in the msys directory. This will initialize MSYS2. The shell will tell you toexit
and restart the shell. For now, ignore it. -
Update MSYS2 and install packages required to build julia, using the
pacman
package manager included in MSYS2:
pacman-key --init #Download keys
pacman -Syu #Update package database and full system upgrade
Now `exit` the MSYS2 shell and restart it, *even if you already restarted it above*. This is necessary in case the system upgrade updated the main MSYS2 libs. Reopen the MSYS2 shell and continue with:
```
pacman -S diffutils git m4 make patch tar msys/openssh
-
Configure your MSYS2 shell for convenience:
echo "mount C:/Python27 /python" >> ~/.bashrc
# uncomment ONE of the following two lines
#echo "mount C:/mingw-builds/x64-4.8.1-win32-seh-rev5/mingw64 /mingw" >> ~/.bashrc
#echo "mount C:/mingw-builds/x32-4.8.1-win32-sjlj-rev5/mingw32 /mingw" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/opt/bin:/mingw/bin:/python" >> ~/.bashrc
*N.B.* The `export` clobbers whatever `$PATH` is already defined. This is suggested to avoid path-masking. If you use MSYS2 for purposes other than building Julia, you may prefer to append rather than clobber.
*N.B.* All of the path-separators in the mount commands are unix-style.
6. Configuration of the toolchain is complete. Now `exit` the MSYS2 shell.
6. Build Julia and its dependencies from source.
1. Relaunch the MSYS2 shell and type
```
. ~/.bashrc # Some versions of MSYS2 do not run this automatically
Ignore any warnings you see from `mount` about `/mingw` and `/python` not existing.
- Get the Julia sources ``` git clone https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia.git cd julia
3. Specify the location where you installed CMake
```
echo 'override CMAKE=/C/path/to/CMake/bin/cmake.exe' > Make.user
- Start the build ``` make -j 4 # Adjust the number of cores (4) to match your build environment.
7. Setup Package Development Environment
1. The `Pkg` module in Base provides many convenient tools for [developing and publishing packages](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/packages/).
One of the packages added through pacman above was `openssh`, which will allow secure access to GitHub APIs.
Follow GitHub's [guide](https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys) to setting up SSH keys to ensure your local machine can communicate with GitHub effectively.
5. In case of the issues with building packages (i.e. ICU fails to build with the following error message ```error compiling xp_parse: error compiling xp_make_parser: could not load module libexpat-1: %```) run ```make win-extras``` and then copy everything from the ```dist-extras``` folder into ```usr/bin```.
## Cygwin-to-MinGW cross compiling
Julia can be also compiled from source in [Cygwin](http://www.cygwin.com), using versions of the MinGW-w64 compilers available through Cygwin's package manager.
1. Download and run Cygwin setup for [32 bit](http://cygwin.com/setup-x86.exe) or [64 bit](http://cygwin.com/setup-x86_64.exe). Note that you can compile either 32 or 64 bit Julia from either 32 or 64 bit Cygwin. 64 bit Cygwin has a slightly smaller but often more up-to-date selection of packages.
2. Select installation location and download mirror.
3. At the "Select Packages" step, select the following:
1. `git` (under `Devel` category)
2. `make` (under `Devel` category)
3. `curl` (under `Net` category)
4. `patch` (under `Devel` category)
5. `python` (under `Interpreters` or `Python` category)
6. `gcc-g++` (under `Devel` category)
7. `m4` (under `Interpreters` category)
8. `cmake` (under `Devel` category)
9. `p7zip` (under `Archive` category)
10. `mingw64-i686-gcc-g++` and `mingw64-i686-gcc-fortran` (for 32 bit Julia, under `Devel` category)
11. `mingw64-x86_64-gcc-g++` and `mingw64-x86_64-gcc-fortran` (for 64 bit Julia, under `Devel` category)
4. At the "Resolving Dependencies" step, be sure to leave "Select required packages (RECOMMENDED)" enabled.
5. Allow Cygwin installation to finish, then start a "Cygwin Terminal" (or "Cygwin64 Terminal") from the installed shortcut.
6. Build Julia and its dependencies from source.
1. Get the Julia sources
```
git clone --recursive https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia.git
cd julia
*Tips:*
- If you get an `error: cannot fork() for fetch-pack: Resource temporarily unavailable` from git, add `alias git="env PATH=/usr/bin git"` to `~/.bashrc` and restart Cygwin.
-
Set the
XC_HOST
variable inMake.user
to indicate MinGW-w64 cross compilationFor 32 bit Julia
echo 'XC_HOST = i686-w64-mingw32' > Make.user
For 64 bit Julia
```
echo 'XC_HOST = x86_64-w64-mingw32' > Make.user
- Start the build ``` make -j 4 # Adjust the number of cores (4) to match your build environment.
7. Run Julia using the Julia executables directly
```
usr/bin/julia.exe
usr/bin/julia-debug.exe
If you prefer to cross-compile, the following steps should get you started.
First, you will need to ensure your system has the required dependencies. We need wine (>=1.7.5), a system compiler, and some downloaders.
On Ubuntu:
apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
apt-get upate
apt-get install wine1.7 subversion cvs gcc wget p7zip-full
On Mac: Install XCode, XCode command line tools, X11 (now XQuartz),
and MacPorts or Homebrew.
Then run port install wine wget
or brew install wine wget
, as appropriate.
On Both:
Unfortunately, the version of gcc installed by Ubuntu targets pthreads. On Mac, the situation is similar: the version in MacPorts is very old and Homebrew does not have it. So first we need to get a cross-compile version of gcc. Most binary packages appear to not include gfortran, so we will need to compile it from source (or ask @vtjnash to send you a tgz of his build). This is typically quite a bit of work, so we will use this script to make it easy.
svn checkout svn checkout svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/mingw-w64-dgn/code/trunk mingw-w64-dgn-code
cd mingw-w64-dgn
- edit
rebuild_cross.sh
and make the following two changes: a. uncommentexport MAKE_OPT="-j 2"
, if appropriate for your machine b. addfortran
to the end of--enable-languages=c,c++,objc,obj-c++
bash update_source.sh
bash rebuild_cross.sh
mv cross ~/cross-w64
export PATH=$HOME/cross-w64/bin:$PATH
# NOTE: it is important that you remember to always do this before using make in the following steps!, you can put this line in your .profile to make it easy
Then we can essentially just repeat these steps for the 32-bit compiler, reusing some of the work:
cd ..
cp -a mingw-w64-dgn mingw-w32-dgn
cd mingw-w32-dgn
rm -r cross build
bash rebuild_cross.sh 32r
mv cross ~/cross-w32
export PATH=$HOME/cross-w32/bin:$PATH
# NOTE: it is important that you remember to always do this before using make in the following steps!, you can put this line in your .profile to make it easy
Note: for systems that support rpm-based package managers, the OpenSUSE build service appears to contain a fully up-to-date versions of the necessary dependencies.
- Install the following packages from the official Arch repository:
sudo pacman -S cloog gcc-ada libmpc p7zip ppl subversion zlib
- The rest of the prerequisites consist of the mingw-w64 packages, which are available in the AUR Arch repository. They must be installed exactly in the order they are given or else their installation will fail. The
yaourt
package manager is used for illustration purposes; you may instead follow the Arch instructions for installing packages from AUR or may use your preferred package manager. To start with, installmingw-w64-binutils
via the commandyaourt -S mingw-w64-binutils
yaourt -S mingw-w64-headers-svn
yaourt -S mingw-w64-headers-bootstrap
yaourt -S mingw-w64-gcc-base
yaourt -S mingw-w64-crt-svn
- Remove
mingw-w64-headers-bootstrap
without removing its dependent mingw-w64 installed packages by using the commandyaourt -Rdd mingw-w64-headers-bootstrap
yaourt -S mingw-w64-winpthreads
- Remove
mingw-w64-gcc-base
without removing its installed mingw-w64 dependencies:yaourt -Rdd mingw-w64-gcc-base
- Complete the installation of the required
mingw-w64
packages:yaourt -S mingw-w64-gcc
Finally, the build and install process for Julia:
git clone https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia.git julia-win32
echo override XC_HOST = i686-w64-mingw32 >> Make.user
make
make win-extras
(Necessary before runningmake dist
p)make dist
- move the julia-* directory / zip file to the target machine
If you are building for 64-bit windows, the steps are essentially the same. Just replace i686 in XC_HOST with x86_64. (note: on Mac, wine only runs in 32-bit mode)
- run gdb under the windows console (cmd) instead. gdb does not function properly under mintty with non-cygwin applications.
-
Disable the Windows Superfetch and Program Compatibility Assistant services, as they are known to have spurious interactions with MinGW/Cygwin.
As mentioned in the link above: excessive memory use by
svchost
specifically may be investigated in the Task Manager by clicking on the high-memorysvchost.exe
process and selectingGo to Services
. Disable child services one-by-one until a culprit is found. -
Beware of BLODA
The vmmap tool is indispensable for identifying such software conflicts. Use vmmap to inspect the list of loaded DLLs for bash, mintty, or another persistent process used to drive the build. Essentially any DLL outside of the Windows System directory is potential BLODA.