julia_setup() hanging after message on "Loading setup script" on Windows 10, R 4.3.1, Julia 1.9.2

[durraniu]

I have JuliaCall package installed and julia 1.9.2 is in my system path (REPL runs outside RStudio). My R version is 4.3.1 I am on Windows 10.

With julia_setup(), I get the following message and then it just hangs.

    Julia version 1.9.2 at location C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Programs\JULIA-~1.2\bin will be used.
    Loading setup script for JuliaCall...

I tried with the development version, but that did not work either. I know there was a previous similar issue but it was not on Windows.

[frankiethull]

@durraniu - how long did it get hung up for? I thought there might be an error as well, but after 5-10 minutes staring at "Loading setup script for JuliaCall..." it finished. My setup is similar to yours, with a newer version of Julia.

Loading setup script for JuliaCall...
Finish loading setup script for JuliaCall.

Julia version 1.9.3 JuliaCall_0.17.5

R version 4.3.1 (2023-06-16 ucrt) Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit) Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19045)

[durraniu]

I waited for about 18 minutes with no change. But I'll try after updating both julia and the package. Thanks.

[bschneidr]

I waited for 20 minutes and gave up after that. Right now this bug makes Julia unusable in Quarto for me.

[alex-rand]

I am also having this problem

[renanmarks]

Same here. Calling julia_setup() crashes the R server every time.

[fkohrt]

Also having this problem in the Posit Cloud when running JuliaCall::julia_setup()

• OS: Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS
• Julia: 1.9.1
• JuliaCall: 0.17.5

[LR234234]

I'm experiencing the same issue and am unsure how to proceed. I've already waited over 12 hours without success. However, Windows consistently reports that R is consuming a significant amount of processing power.

I've tested this with R 4.2.1 and Julia 1.9.4 on Windows 10 x64, as well as with other versions of R and Julia, but the problem persists.

[ViralBShah]

I suggest trying with the latest versions and reopening if still an issue. Windows works fine in the CI for this package.

[fkohrt]

I don't know how long this command is supposed to take, but as reported here it does not complete in the Posit Cloud, and it still doesn't.

[ViralBShah]

Not more than a few mins I believe. It is probably hanging because of permissions issues, or inability to download Julia. Something is holding it up.

[fkohrt]

Actually, I cannot reproduce it anymore, because the Posit Cloud just crashes now (and that shouldn't be an issue of the JuliaCall package). It does work on my local machine (Fedora 42).

[ViralBShah]

Ok, if reproducible again, once it is hanging for a few minutes, press ctrl-c several times to kill the program and share what you get. Cloud services sometimes just block certain URLs and such, so it could be something benign.

If we get some logs, we can reopen this.

[bschneidr]

This remains an issue for me with Julia 1.12.1 and the latest version of JuliaCall (https://github.com/JuliaInterop/JuliaCall/commit/ee05072bdee7a6b91ff4e41813f98d11c47c2126), in R 4.5.1. After installing Julia 1.12.1 using juliaup and installing the latest version of JuliaCall, I restarted my computer, opened a fresh R session, and tried to run julia_setup().

Here is a reprex:

library(JuliaCall)

julia_setup()

#> Julia version 1.12.1 at location C:\Users\benja\.julia\juliaup\julia-1.12.1+0.x64.w64.mingw32\bin will be used.
#> Loading setup script for JuliaCall...

This hung for 10 minutes before I gave up.

Below is the R session info.

─ Session info ────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 setting  value
 version  R version 4.5.1 (2025-06-13 ucrt)
 os       Windows 11 x64 (build 26100)
 system   x86_64, mingw32
 ui       Rgui
 language (EN)
 collate  English_United States.utf8
 ctype    English_United States.utf8
 tz       America/New_York
 date     2025-11-04
 pandoc   NA
 quarto   NA @ C:\\Users\\benja\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Quarto\\bin\\quarto.exe

─ Packages ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 package     * version date (UTC) lib source
 cli           3.6.5   2025-04-23 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.1)
 evaluate      1.0.5   2025-08-27 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.1)
 JuliaCall   * 0.17.6  2025-11-05 [1] Github (JuliaInterop/JuliaCall@ee05072)
 knitr         1.50    2025-03-16 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
 Rcpp          1.1.0   2025-07-02 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.1)
 sessioninfo   1.2.3   2025-02-05 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.0)
 xfun          0.53    2025-08-19 [1] CRAN (R 4.5.1)

 [1] C:/Users/benja/OneDrive/R_LIBRARY/4.5
 [2] C:/Program Files/R/R-4.5.1/library
 * ── Packages attached to the search path.

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Please let me know if there are other details I can provide to help debug the issue.