`julia` not found despite correct installation and the directory existing in the PATH

[Datseris]

Hi,

a couple of students of mine are having problems installing Julia via juliaup in windows 10 and 11. The typical error is:

PS C:\Users\alann> juliaup status
 Default  Channel  Version                   Update
----------------------------------------------------
       *  release  1.11.7+0.x64.w64.mingw32
PS C:\Users\alann> julia
Error: The Julia launcher failed to determine the command for the `release` channel.

Caused by:
    0: Failed to normalize path for Julia binary, starting from `C:\Users\alann\.julia\juliaup\juliaup.json`.
    1: The system cannot find the file specified. (os error 2)

as you can see, juliaup is correctly installed as well as the release version. We also checked, and the issue mentioned here: https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ive-installed-juliaup-from-the-ms-store-but-its-not-in-path/77809/4 does not hold, i.e., %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps is in the path, and there is in that path a JuliaComputing.xxxx folder that does have the julia executable.

What is going on? How can I help the students? The problem is not clear to me...

[GunnarFarneback]

The way I read the error is that juliaup works, that it believes it has installed the release version, but that it anyway can't find the Julia binary.

Is there a C:\Users\alann\.julia\juliaup\julia-1.11.7+0.x64.w64.mingw32 directory (or something similar, I'm extrapolating from my Linux installation)? Is there a C:\Users\alann\.julia\juliaup\julia-1.11.7+0.x64.w64.mingw32\bin\julia file?

[Datseris]

From Gunnar on slack:

When the user types julia that is in reality an alias for juliaup and is found in the microsoft store path. Then juliaup consults its own configuration files to determine where the actual julia binary is and calls it (with absolute path), which is where things go bad in this case. In a working installation you can run Base.julia_cmd() to see where it found the Julia binary.

My guess is that either the julia installation is not actually there at all or that it is corrupted in some way so the binary is missing. No idea how or why that would happen though. Any chance that an over-zealous anti-virus has decided that the Julia binary is dangerous and needed to be quarantined?