Day_02: a meta-Julia GitHub actions journey
Contents
Day_02: a meta-Julia GitHub actions journey¶
Today the goal was to build Julia notebooks in an automatic deployment
with GitHub actions. I have used this workflow for all of my Python
notebooks, but I
hadn’t added the extra Julia requirement. I wasn’t sure at first how
to use Julia’s excellent Pkg tools from bash.
Starting with what works¶
My action to deploy the Jupyter Book I took directly from the Jupyter Book project.
Here was my existing build-docs.yml
name: deploy-book
# Only run this when the master branch changes
on:
push:
branches:
- master
# This job installs dependencies, build the book, and pushes it to `gh-pages`
jobs:
deploy-book:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v2
# Install dependencies
- name: Set up Python 3.9
uses: actions/setup-python@v1
with:
python-version: 3.9
- name: Install dependencies
run: |
pip install -r requirements.txt
# Build the book
- name: Build the book
run: |
jupyter-book build .
# Push the book's HTML to github-pages
- name: GitHub Pages action
uses: peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3.5.9
with:
github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
publish_dir: ./_build/html
This action executes automatically as I merge into the master branch and deploys in my personal github-pages site. Its a great way to share content.
Adding Julia + IJulia to the workflow¶
Yaml files can be finicky, so when I copy-pasted another github action from the excellent QuantEcon with Julia I had some troubleshooting in whitespaces vs tabs. The main lines I needed were:
- name: Set up Julia
uses: julia-actions/setup-julia@v1
with:
version: 1.7.2
- name: Install IJulia and setup project
shell: bash
run: |
julia -e 'using Pkg; Pkg.add("IJulia");'
julia --project=Julia-learning --threads auto -e 'using Pkg; Pkg.instantiate();'
Where I would use julia-actions to get access to Julia. Then, install
IJulia using the julia -e 'using Pkg; Pkg.add("IJulia")'. Nice!
The result was that I had the new Day_01 post added to the sections in the Learning Julia table of contents.
Including plots¶
The page existed, but yesterday I was working on plotting with the
Plots package. I received this error in the notebook:
ArgumentError: Package Plots not found in current path:
- Run `import Pkg; Pkg.add("Plots")` to install the Plots package.
Stacktrace:
[1] require(into::Module, mod::Symbol)
@ Base ./loading.jl:967
[2] eval
@ ./boot.jl:373 [inlined]
[3] include_string(mapexpr::typeof(REPL.softscope), mod::Module, code::String, filename::String)
@ Base ./loading.jl:1196
So, I updated the Julia build with Plots:
- name: Install IJulia and setup project
shell: bash
run: |
julia -e 'using Pkg; Pkg.add("IJulia");'
julia -e 'using Pkg; Pkg.add("Plots");' # <--------- the magic word!
julia --project=Julia-learning --threads auto -e 'using Pkg; Pkg.instantiate();'
Once I had Plots added, the figures and even animations showed up
without widgets or any other magic! Mostly because the animations are
cleverly built as gifs.
Wrapping up¶
Today I didn’t get any real Julia development work, but I was able to build scripts to
install Julia packages via
julia -e 'using Pkg; ...'build Jupyter Books using the Julia kernel
display Julia figures and animations on my website