diff --git a/pkgs/development/compilers/julia/0.3.nix b/pkgs/development/compilers/julia/0.3.nix
index 3eb55ad8ac05..9faeda215936 100644
--- a/pkgs/development/compilers/julia/0.3.nix
+++ b/pkgs/development/compilers/julia/0.3.nix
@@ -11,16 +11,18 @@ let
 in
 stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
   pname = "julia";
-  version = "0.3.6";
+  version = "0.3.9";
   name = "${pname}-${version}";
 
   src = fetchgit {
     url = "git://github.com/JuliaLang/julia.git";
     rev = "refs/tags/v${version}";
-    md5 = "d28e8f428485219f756d80c011d5dd32";
+    sha256 = "ad0820affefd04eb6fba7deb2603756974711846a251900a9202b8d2665a37cf";
     name = "julia-git-v${version}";
   };
 
+  patches = [ ./0001-work-around-buggy-wcwidth.patch ];
+
   extraSrcs =
     let
       dsfmt_ver = "2.2";
diff --git a/pkgs/development/compilers/julia/0001-work-around-buggy-wcwidth.patch b/pkgs/development/compilers/julia/0001-work-around-buggy-wcwidth.patch
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..7c4870fb2a89
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pkgs/development/compilers/julia/0001-work-around-buggy-wcwidth.patch
@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+From b9070aeab0ab672ffe321089631f9afe263b0caa Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
+From: Thomas Tuegel <ttuegel@gmail.com>
+Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2015 12:03:32 -0500
+Subject: [PATCH] work around buggy wcwidth
+
+---
+ test/unicode.jl | 3 ++-
+ 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
+
+diff --git a/test/unicode.jl b/test/unicode.jl
+index 52c3e6a..f1ef698 100644
+--- a/test/unicode.jl
++++ b/test/unicode.jl
+@@ -103,5 +103,6 @@ end
+ 
+ # handling of embedded NUL chars (#10958)
+ @test length("\0w") == length("\0α") == 2
+-@test strwidth("\0w") == strwidth("\0α") == 1
++@test strwidth("\0w") == charwidth('\0') + charwidth('w')
++@test strwidth("\0α") == charwidth('\0') + charwidth('α')
+ @test normalize_string("\0W", casefold=true) == "\0w"
+-- 
+2.4.1
+