Environment Variables
Julia can be configured with a number of environment variables, set either in the usual way for each operating system, or in a portable way from within Julia. Supposing that you want to set the environment variable JULIA_EDITOR
to vim
, you can type ENV["JULIA_EDITOR"] = "vim"
(for instance, in the REPL) to make this change on a case by case basis, or add the same to the user configuration file ~/.julia/config/startup.jl
in the user's home directory to have a permanent effect. The current value of the same environment variable can be determined by evaluating ENV["JULIA_EDITOR"]
.
The environment variables that Julia uses generally start with JULIA
. If InteractiveUtils.versioninfo
is called with the keyword verbose=true
, then the output will list any defined environment variables relevant for Julia, including those which include JULIA
in their names.
Some variables, such as JULIA_NUM_THREADS
and JULIA_PROJECT
, need to be set before Julia starts, therefore adding these to ~/.julia/config/startup.jl
is too late in the startup process. In Bash, environment variables can either be set manually by running, e.g., export JULIA_NUM_THREADS=4
before starting Julia, or by adding the same command to ~/.bashrc
or ~/.bash_profile
to set the variable each time Bash is started.
File locations
JULIA_BINDIR
The absolute path of the directory containing the Julia executable, which sets the global variable Sys.BINDIR
. If $JULIA_BINDIR
is not set, then Julia determines the value Sys.BINDIR
at run-time.
The executable itself is one of
$JULIA_BINDIR/julia
$JULIA_BINDIR/julia-debug
by default.
The global variable Base.DATAROOTDIR
determines a relative path from Sys.BINDIR
to the data directory associated with Julia. Then the path
$JULIA_BINDIR/$DATAROOTDIR/julia/base
determines the directory in which Julia initially searches for source files (via Base.find_source_file()
).
Likewise, the global variable Base.SYSCONFDIR
determines a relative path to the configuration file directory. Then Julia searches for a startup.jl
file at
$JULIA_BINDIR/$SYSCONFDIR/julia/startup.jl
$JULIA_BINDIR/../etc/julia/startup.jl
by default (via Base.load_julia_startup()
).
For example, a Linux installation with a Julia executable located at /bin/julia
, a DATAROOTDIR
of ../share
, and a SYSCONFDIR
of ../etc
will have JULIA_BINDIR
set to /bin
, a source-file search path of
/share/julia/base
and a global configuration search path of
/etc/julia/startup.jl
JULIA_PROJECT
A directory path that indicates which project should be the initial active project. Setting this environment variable has the same effect as specifying the --project
start-up option, but --project
has higher precedence. If the variable is set to @.
then Julia tries to find a project directory that contains Project.toml
or JuliaProject.toml
file from the current directory and its parents. See also the chapter on Code Loading.
JULIA_PROJECT
must be defined before starting julia; defining it in startup.jl
is too late in the startup process.
JULIA_LOAD_PATH
The JULIA_LOAD_PATH
environment variable is used to populate the global Julia LOAD_PATH
variable, which determines which packages can be loaded via import
and using
(see Code Loading).
Unlike the shell PATH
variable, empty entries in JULIA_LOAD_PATH
are expanded to the default value of LOAD_PATH
, ["@", "@v#.#", "@stdlib"]
when populating LOAD_PATH
. This allows easy appending, prepending, etc. of the load path value in shell scripts regardless of whether JULIA_LOAD_PATH
is already set or not. For example, to prepend the directory /foo/bar
to LOAD_PATH
just do
export JULIA_LOAD_PATH="/foo/bar:$JULIA_LOAD_PATH"
If the JULIA_LOAD_PATH
environment variable is already set, its old value will be prepended with /foo/bar
. On the other hand, if JULIA_LOAD_PATH
is not set, then it will be set to /foo/bar:
which will expand to a LOAD_PATH
value of ["/foo/bar", "@", "@v#.#", "@stdlib"]
. If JULIA_LOAD_PATH
is set to the empty string, it expands to an empty LOAD_PATH
array. In other words, the empty string is interpreted as a zero-element array, not a one-element array of the empty string. This behavior was chosen so that it would be possible to set an empty load path via the environment variable. If you want the default load path, either unset the environment variable or if it must have a value, set it to the string :
.
On Windows, path elements are separated by the ;
character, as is the case with most path lists on Windows. Replace :
with ;
in the above paragraph.
JULIA_DEPOT_PATH
The JULIA_DEPOT_PATH
environment variable is used to populate the global Julia DEPOT_PATH
variable, which controls where the package manager, as well as Julia's code loading mechanisms, look for package registries, installed packages, named environments, repo clones, cached compiled package images, configuration files, and the default location of the REPL's history file.
Unlike the shell PATH
variable but similar to JULIA_LOAD_PATH
, empty entries in JULIA_DEPOT_PATH
are expanded to the default value of DEPOT_PATH
. This allows easy appending, prepending, etc. of the depot path value in shell scripts regardless of whether JULIA_DEPOT_PATH
is already set or not. For example, to prepend the directory /foo/bar
to DEPOT_PATH
just do
export JULIA_DEPOT_PATH="/foo/bar:$JULIA_DEPOT_PATH"
If the JULIA_DEPOT_PATH
environment variable is already set, its old value will be prepended with /foo/bar
. On the other hand, if JULIA_DEPOT_PATH
is not set, then it will be set to /foo/bar:
which will have the effect of prepending /foo/bar
to the default depot path. If JULIA_DEPOT_PATH
is set to the empty string, it expands to an empty DEPOT_PATH
array. In other words, the empty string is interpreted as a zero-element array, not a one-element array of the empty string. This behavior was chosen so that it would be possible to set an empty depot path via the environment variable. If you want the default depot path, either unset the environment variable or if it must have a value, set it to the string :
.
On Windows, path elements are separated by the ;
character, as is the case with most path lists on Windows. Replace :
with ;
in the above paragraph.
JULIA_HISTORY
The absolute path REPL.find_hist_file()
of the REPL's history file. If $JULIA_HISTORY
is not set, then REPL.find_hist_file()
defaults to
$(DEPOT_PATH[1])/logs/repl_history.jl
JULIA_PKG_SERVER
Used by Pkg.jl
, for downloading packages and updating the registry. By default, Pkg
uses https://pkg.julialang.org
to fetch Julia packages. You can use this environment variable to select a different server. In addition, you can disable the use of the PkgServer protocol, and instead access the packages directly from their hosts (GitHub, GitLab, etc.) by setting:
export JULIA_PKG_SERVER=""
External applications
JULIA_SHELL
The absolute path of the shell with which Julia should execute external commands (via Base.repl_cmd()
). Defaults to the environment variable $SHELL
, and falls back to /bin/sh
if $SHELL
is unset.
On Windows, this environment variable is ignored, and external commands are executed directly.
JULIA_EDITOR
The editor returned by InteractiveUtils.editor()
and used in, e.g., InteractiveUtils.edit
, referring to the command of the preferred editor, for instance vim
.
$JULIA_EDITOR
takes precedence over $VISUAL
, which in turn takes precedence over $EDITOR
. If none of these environment variables is set, then the editor is taken to be open
on Windows and OS X, or /etc/alternatives/editor
if it exists, or emacs
otherwise.
Parallelization
JULIA_CPU_THREADS
Overrides the global variable Base.Sys.CPU_THREADS
, the number of logical CPU cores available.
JULIA_WORKER_TIMEOUT
A Float64
that sets the value of Distributed.worker_timeout()
(default: 60.0
). This function gives the number of seconds a worker process will wait for a master process to establish a connection before dying.
JULIA_NUM_THREADS
An unsigned 64-bit integer (uint64_t
) that sets the maximum number of threads available to Julia. If $JULIA_NUM_THREADS
is not positive or is not set, or if the number of CPU threads cannot be determined through system calls, then the number of threads is set to 1
.
If $JULIA_NUM_THREADS
is set to auto
, then the number of threads will be set to the number of CPU threads.
JULIA_NUM_THREADS
must be defined before starting julia; defining it in startup.jl
is too late in the startup process.
In Julia 1.5 and above the number of threads can also be specified on startup using the -t
/--threads
command line argument.
The auto
value for $JULIA_NUM_THREADS
requires Julia 1.7 or above.
JULIA_THREAD_SLEEP_THRESHOLD
If set to a string that starts with the case-insensitive substring "infinite"
, then spinning threads never sleep. Otherwise, $JULIA_THREAD_SLEEP_THRESHOLD
is interpreted as an unsigned 64-bit integer (uint64_t
) and gives, in nanoseconds, the amount of time after which spinning threads should sleep.
JULIA_EXCLUSIVE
If set to anything besides 0
, then Julia's thread policy is consistent with running on a dedicated machine: the master thread is on proc 0, and threads are affinitized. Otherwise, Julia lets the operating system handle thread policy.
REPL formatting
Environment variables that determine how REPL output should be formatted at the terminal. Generally, these variables should be set to ANSI terminal escape sequences. Julia provides a high-level interface with much of the same functionality; see the section on The Julia REPL.
JULIA_ERROR_COLOR
The formatting Base.error_color()
(default: light red, "\033[91m"
) that errors should have at the terminal.
JULIA_WARN_COLOR
The formatting Base.warn_color()
(default: yellow, "\033[93m"
) that warnings should have at the terminal.
JULIA_INFO_COLOR
The formatting Base.info_color()
(default: cyan, "\033[36m"
) that info should have at the terminal.
JULIA_INPUT_COLOR
The formatting Base.input_color()
(default: normal, "\033[0m"
) that input should have at the terminal.
JULIA_ANSWER_COLOR
The formatting Base.answer_color()
(default: normal, "\033[0m"
) that output should have at the terminal.
Debugging and profiling
JULIA_DEBUG
Enable debug logging for a file or module, see Logging
for more information.
JULIA_GC_ALLOC_POOL
, JULIA_GC_ALLOC_OTHER
, JULIA_GC_ALLOC_PRINT
If set, these environment variables take strings that optionally start with the character 'r'
, followed by a string interpolation of a colon-separated list of three signed 64-bit integers (int64_t
). This triple of integers a:b:c
represents the arithmetic sequence a
, a + b
, a + 2*b
, ... c
.
- If it's the
n
th time thatjl_gc_pool_alloc()
has been called, andn
belongs to the arithmetic sequence represented by$JULIA_GC_ALLOC_POOL
, then garbage collection is forced. - If it's the
n
th time thatmaybe_collect()
has been called, andn
belongs to the arithmetic sequence represented by$JULIA_GC_ALLOC_OTHER
, then garbage collection is forced. - If it's the
n
th time thatjl_gc_collect()
has been called, andn
belongs to the arithmetic sequence represented by$JULIA_GC_ALLOC_PRINT
, then counts for the number of calls tojl_gc_pool_alloc()
andmaybe_collect()
are printed.
If the value of the environment variable begins with the character 'r'
, then the interval between garbage collection events is randomized.
These environment variables only have an effect if Julia was compiled with garbage-collection debugging (that is, if WITH_GC_DEBUG_ENV
is set to 1
in the build configuration).
JULIA_GC_NO_GENERATIONAL
If set to anything besides 0
, then the Julia garbage collector never performs "quick sweeps" of memory.
This environment variable only has an effect if Julia was compiled with garbage-collection debugging (that is, if WITH_GC_DEBUG_ENV
is set to 1
in the build configuration).
JULIA_GC_WAIT_FOR_DEBUGGER
If set to anything besides 0
, then the Julia garbage collector will wait for a debugger to attach instead of aborting whenever there's a critical error.
This environment variable only has an effect if Julia was compiled with garbage-collection debugging (that is, if WITH_GC_DEBUG_ENV
is set to 1
in the build configuration).
ENABLE_JITPROFILING
If set to anything besides 0
, then the compiler will create and register an event listener for just-in-time (JIT) profiling.
This environment variable only has an effect if Julia was compiled with JIT profiling support, using either
- Intel's VTune™ Amplifier (
USE_INTEL_JITEVENTS
set to1
in the build configuration), or - OProfile (
USE_OPROFILE_JITEVENTS
set to1
in the build configuration). - Perf (
USE_PERF_JITEVENTS
set to1
in the build configuration). This integration is enabled by default.
ENABLE_GDBLISTENER
If set to anything besides 0
enables GDB registration of Julia code on release builds. On debug builds of Julia this is always enabled. Recommended to use with -g 2
.
JULIA_LLVM_ARGS
Arguments to be passed to the LLVM backend.