gdkrmr/julia-repl

Run an inferior Julia REPL in a terminal inside Emacs

julia-repl: run an inferior Julia REPL in Emacs

This is a minor mode for interacting with a Julia REPL running inside Emacs. The julia process is started in an ANSI terminal (term), which allows text formatting and colors, and interaction with the help system and the debugger.

It is recommended that you use this minor mode with julia-mode.

Installation and loading

Please make sure you have at least Emacs 25. The term code changed a bit since Emacs 24, and the package does not support it. For example, Ubuntu users can get the latest Emacs snapshot here.

Place this in your Emacs initialization files (eg .emacs):

(add-to-list 'load-path path-to-julia-repl)
(require 'julia-repl)
(add-hook 'julia-mode-hook 'julia-repl-mode) ;; always use minor mode

If you want to use a Julia executable other than julia in your path, set

(julia-repl-set-executable "/path/to/julia")

Usage

M-x julia-repl, or C-c C-z from a buffer in which the julia-repl minor mode is active starts a new inferior Julia process. The keys below can be used to interact with this process.

key	action
C-c C-c	send region (when applicable) or line to REPL
C-c C-b	send whole buffer to REPL (using include)
C-u C-c C-b	send whole buffer to REPL (directly)
C-c C-z	raise the REPL or create a new one
C-RET	send line to REPL (without bracketed paste)
C-c C-e	invoke @edit on region (when applicable) or line
C-c C-d	invoke @doc on symbol
C-c C-w	workspace()
C-c C-m	expand macro

All actions that send something to the REPL terminate with a newline, triggering evaluation. If you want to avoid sending a newline (eg maybe because you want to edit an expression), use prefix arguments (C-- or C-u, currently both have the same effect). This of course does not apply to C-c C-b.

All commands send code using bracketed paste. When Julia is waiting for input, control characters like ^[[200~ may show up in your buffer, this is innocuous. If you input takes a long time to evaluate, you can step through it line-by-line with C-RET.

Also, note some keybindings for term:

1. C-x C-j switches to line mode, where you can kill/yank, move around the buffer, use standard Emacs keybindings,
2. C-c C-k switches back to char mode,
3. for scrolling, use S-<prior> and S-<next>.

See the help of term for more.

Limitations

• See the issues.

Comparison to ESS

A well-known alternative is ESS, which also supports Julia. julia-repl was written because I could not use Gallium from ESS, which is based on comint, and thus does not allow a fully functioning terminal. Also, relying on the interactive features of the Julia REPL implies that I would not need to change this library to incorporate extensions and changes.