How to choose between similar packages (for the Julia programming language)?

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1

I would like to install Julia, but I am confused about the available packages (julia, julia-stable, julia-bin, julia-stable-bin).

Is there any place where I could find information on the reasoning behind the packaging?

2

There is some information of the wiki.

3

Thanks, that answers my question.

4

Yeah, this is kind of confusing! Sorry about that… To explain a little bit:

  • -stable packages are for Julia LTS versions, which are very old at this point. I believe 1.0-ish. You probably want something more recent.
  • -bin packages are not built from source directly, but are instead built off of the official binaries released by Julia. Building Julia from source has proven to be quite a nightmare, so the -bin packages take the easy route. From the end-user perspective, -bin packages should be indistinguishable from source built ones.

BTW this is making me think we should rename -stable to -lts, since 1.6.2 is the current “stable” release, and 1.0.5 is the current “LTS” release.

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