How to Resolve the Issue of PyPlot Not Displaying Figures in Julia on VS Code

I encountered a situation where figures would not display when plotting with Julia’s PyPlot in VS Code. Here, I will document the solution.

The version of Julia I was using was 1.10.03.

Key Point

The crucial step was to execute the following command:

pyimport("matplotlib.pyplot").ion()

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Install PyPlot

import Pkg
Pkg.add("PyPlot")
using PyPlot

2. Set the Backend for Matplotlib (Specifically for Windows and VS Code)
If figures are not displaying in VS Code, use the following additional commands:

Pkg.add("PyCall")
using PyCall
pyimport("matplotlib.pyplot").ion()

This step ensures that the appropriate backend for Matplotlib is automatically selected when using PyPlot in VS Code.

3. Example Code

data = rand(10)
figure(figsize=(5, 5))
plot(1:10, data)
display(gcf())

By following these steps, you should be able to display plots using PyPlot in Julia while working within VS Code.

Here is the full, streamlined code for ensuring that PyPlot displays figures correctly when using Julia in VS Code.

import Pkg

# Install necessary packages
Pkg.add("PyPlot")
Pkg.add("PyCall")

# Import PyPlot and PyCall
using PyPlot
using PyCall

# Ensure Matplotlib's interactive mode is enabled to display plots in VS Code
pyimport("matplotlib.pyplot").ion()

# Generate and display a simple plot
data = rand(10)
figure(figsize=(5, 5))
plot(1:10, data)
display(gcf())