.. _man-workflow-tips:

***************
 Workflow Tips
***************

Here are some tips for working with Julia efficiently.

REPL-based workflow
-------------------

As already elaborated in :ref:`man-interacting-with-julia`, Julia's
REPL provides rich functionality that facilitates an efficient
interactive workflow. Here are some tips that might further enhance your
experience at the command line.

A basic editor/REPL workflow
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The most basic Julia workflows involve using a text editor in
conjunction with the ``julia`` command line. A common pattern includes
the following elements:

- **Put code under development in a temporary module.** Create a file,
  say ``Tmp.jl``, and include within it ::

      module Tmp

      <your definitions here>

      end

- **Put your test code in another file.** Create another file, say
  ``tst.jl``, which begins with ::

      import Tmp

  and includes tests for the contents of ``Tmp``. The value of using
  :obj:`import` versus :obj:`using` is that you can call :obj:`reload`
  ``("Tmp")`` instead of having to restart the REPL when your
  definitions change. Of course, the cost is the need to prepend
  ``Tmp.`` to uses of names defined in your module. (You can lower that
  cost by keeping your module name short.)

  Alternatively, you can wrap the contents of your test file in a
  module, as ::

      module Tst
          using Tmp

          <scratch work>

      end

  The advantage is that you can now do :obj:`using` ``Tmp`` in your
  test code and can therefore avoid prepending ``Tmp.`` everywhere.
  The disadvantage is that code can no longer be selectively copied
  to the REPL without some tweaking.

- **Lather. Rinse. Repeat.** Explore ideas at the ``julia`` command
  prompt. Save good ideas in ``tst.jl``. Occasionally
  restart the REPL, issuing ::

      reload("Tmp")
      include("tst.jl")

Simplify initialization
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To simplify restarting the REPL, put project-specific initialization
code in a file, say ``_init.jl``, which you can run on startup by
issuing the command::

    julia -L _init.jl

If you further add the following to your ``.juliarc.jl`` file ::

    isinteractive() && isfile("_init.jl") && require("_init.jl")

then calling ``julia`` from that directory will run the initialization
code without the additional command line argument.

Browser-based workflow
----------------------

It is also possible to interact with a Julia REPL in the browser via IJulia_. See the package home for details.

.. _IJulia: https://github.com/JuliaLang/IJulia.jl