Julia-Box-Shell

Overview

Docker for Julia language with X11 (User Interface) support and many pre-installed packages and wrapper script for running the docker.

Benefit

• A ready-to-use Julia development environment, with zero configuration effort required, which can be used from any Linux distribution or any operating system with Docker support.
• Standard and reproducible development environment.

Features

• Many pre-installed packages for statics, charts, symbolic math and so on.
• Pre-configured Julia Notebook
  • Jupyter Notebook for Julia.
• X11 Support
  • Allows to run graphical windows and GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) such as X11 widgets, PyPlot charts, Plots chart and so on.
• Wrapper Unix shell script which simplifies running the docker and mapping the current directory to the docker container.

Pre-installed packages

• Interfaces
  • IJulia => Julia Notebook
• Plot libraries
  • Plots
  • PyPlot
  • StatsPlot
• Statistcs:
  • Distributions => Statistical Distributions
  • DataFrame
  • DataStreams
• Standard Format Parsers
  • JSON
  • CSV
  • XLSX - Excel Parser
• Symbolic Math
  • SymPy
• Literate Programming
  • Weave

Building Instructions

STEP 1: Build the docker.

$ make build 

STEP 2: Test the docker with. The command will run a Julia shell.

$ make run
sh ./julia-box-shell.sh
non-network local connections being added to access control list
               _
   _       _ _(_)_     |  Documentation: https://docs.julialang.org
  (_)     | (_) (_)    |
   _ _   _| |_  __ _   |  Type "?" for help, "]?" for Pkg help.
  | | | | | | |/ _` |  |
  | | |_| | | | (_| |  |  Version 1.3.1 (2019-12-30)
 _/ |\__'_|_|_|\__'_|  |  Official https://julialang.org/ release
|__/                   |

julia> 0:2:10 .|> exp(x)
ERROR: UndefVarError: x not defined
Stacktrace:
 [1] top-level scope at REPL[1]:1

julia> 0:2:10 .|> exp
6-element Array{Float64,1}:
     1.0              
     7.38905609893065 
    54.598150033144236
   403.4287934927351  
  2980.9579870417283  
 22026.465794806718   

STEP 3: Install the wrapper script.

• Just copy the wrapper script to any directory in $PATH variable and run $ julia-box-shell.sh

mkdir -p ~/bin 
chmod +x julia-box-shell.sh 
cp julia-box-shell.sh ~/bin 

# If the directory ~/bin is not in the PATH variable. 
echo "export PATH=~/bin:$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc 

STEP 4: Run wrapper script and open Julia shell.

$ ./julia-box-shell.sh julia
non-network local connections being added to access control list
               _
   _       _ _(_)_     |  Documentation: https://docs.julialang.org
  (_)     | (_) (_)    |
   _ _   _| |_  __ _   |  Type "?" for help, "]?" for Pkg help.
  | | | | | | |/ _` |  |
  | | |_| | | | (_| |  |  Version 1.3.1 (2019-12-30)
 _/ |\__'_|_|_|\__'_|  |  Official https://julialang.org/ release
|__/                   |

julia> using SymPy

julia> x = Sym("x")
x

julia> expand((x - 4)^3)
 3       2            
x  - 12⋅x  + 48⋅x - 64

julia> 

Usage

Once the docker is buitl, the following functionalities can be used:

Run bash Unix shell

• $ ./julia-box-shell.sh sh
• $ ./julia-box-shell.sh bash

$ ./julia-box-shell.sh sh
non-network local connections being added to access control list


eniac@localhost:/work$ whoami
eniac

eniac@localhost:/work$ ls -la
total 40

eniac@localhost:/work$ ls
Dockerfile  FIR_design.jl  Makefile  README.org  julia-box-shell.sh  script.jl

Run Julia Shell

• $ ./julia-box-shell.sh ju
• $ ./julia-box-shell.sh julia

$ ./julia-box-shell.sh julia
non-network local connections being added to access control list
               _
   _       _ _(_)_     |  Documentation: https://docs.julialang.org
  (_)     | (_) (_)    |
   _ _   _| |_  __ _   |  Type "?" for help, "]?" for Pkg help.
  | | | | | | |/ _` |  |
  | | |_| | | | (_| |  |  Version 1.3.1 (2019-12-30)
 _/ |\__'_|_|_|\__'_|  |  Official https://julialang.org/ release
|__/                   |

julia> using SymPy

julia> x = Sym("x")
x

julia> expand((x - 4)^3)
 3       2            
x  - 12⋅x  + 48⋅x - 64

Run Jupyter Notebook (IJulia)

Start Jupyter Notebook Daemon

• $ ./julia-box-shell.sh jupyter start
• $ ./julia-box-shell.sh ju start

Start Jupyter Notebook Daemon

• $ ./julia-box-shell.sh jupyter stop
• $ ./julia-box-shell.sh ju stop

View Log

• $ ./julia-box-shell.sh jupyter log
• $ ./julia-box-shell.sh ju log

Then open the URL in the web browser (http://localhost:8888/?token=333....2e885e597195)

$ ./julia-box-shell.sh jupyter start 
non-network local connections being added to access control list
[I 13:58:31.621 NotebookApp] Writing notebook server cookie secret to /home/eniac/.local/share/jupyter/runtime/notebook_cookie_secret
[I 13:58:31.902 NotebookApp] Serving notebooks from local directory: /work
[I 13:58:31.902 NotebookApp] The Jupyter Notebook is running at:
[I 13:58:31.902 NotebookApp] http://localhost:8888/?token=333e54e39f89f685ed35fcf5711e551c64522e885e597195
... ... ... ... ... ...