You may want to have your students try out http://juliabox.org/ which avoids these sorts of software installation issues and lets students get working immediately. There's not much we can do about Apple's (annoying) XCode license prompt, unfortunately. I would generally recommend getting Julia working in the terminal first and then trying IJulia, which would let you see this problem. Partial package installation is possible because otherwise it's quite difficult to fix a package that won't build – you'd have to clone the package by hand and then try the build by hand. This way all you have to do is go into the package directory and fix the build. The package manager does print bright red warnings about broken packages with some fairly clear directions about what to do. If you have any good ideas about what would be more helpful (aside from always succeeding at building software), we're all ears.
On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 7:56 AM, Sébastien Loisel <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > I convinced one of my students to do his undergrad project using Julia. > The project is on multiprecision arithmetic, but this is not important. I > suggested we use IJulia; for me it seems like the best environment. My > student's laptop computer is a Mac, like mine. > > The student was able to install Julia without a hitch. Thereafter he > followed the IJulia instructions here: > https://github.com/JuliaLang/IJulia.jl > > After adding "IJulia", he tried to start it using "jupyter notebook". At > first, the menu didn't include an "IJulia" notebook option. He somehow got > far enough to have "IJulia" in his menu, but his IJulia session wasn't > working and he got stuck there for a whole day. > > It turns out that he had not yet agreed to the XCode license, but he > couldn't see this because the julia error messages were not showing up in > his browser. Indeed, he was getting a rapidly scrolling terminal window > which he didn't notice; the server kept restarting julia and it would abort > because things weren't operational. He wasn't able to decipher the problem. > > After I fixed his XCode problem, I tried starting IJulia via "using > IJulia" and "notebook()" and saw that several packages were broken, > including ZMC, and was instructed to call Pkg.build(). I'm certain this > would have stymied him as well, being buried in a screenful of > incomprehensible error messages. > > It seems to me that Julia would be more usable if partial package > installation were not possible. Furthermore, IJulia would be more usable if > error messages showed up in the browser instead of at the console. > > Thanks, > > Sébastien Loisel >
