Document that the REPL workflow assumes your module is in LOAD_PATH

[rdeits]

Inspired by https://discourse.julialang.org/t/repl-workflow-reload-doesnt-work/6571 I noticed that the workflow tips section of the manual quietly assumes that the module the user is developing is on the LOAD_PATH. I've added a bullet point to make that requirement explicit.

Please let me know if the wording of this is OK.

[Wikunia]

Thanks @rdeits You might want to include push!(LOAD_PATH, pwd()) which you mentioned in the forum.

[rdeits]

I originally wrote that, but I wasn't sure if that was the best thing to recommend in the manual. If a user does push!(LOAD_PATH, pwd()) at the REPL, that's likely to be fine, but if they put it in a script, then their code will break if the script is run as julia subfolder/foo.jl instead of julia foo.jl. In a script, it would be better to do push!(LOAD_PATH, @__DIR__).

In Julia v0.7, @__DIR__ gives the current working directory when run from the REPL, but in v0.6 it just gives nothing. So I think that push!(LOAD_PATH, @__DIR__) is the right thing to recommend in all cases on v0.7, but won't work on v0.6.

[rdeits]

Although I guess this change will only affect the v0.7 manual, right? So then perhaps the most correct thing would be to change the example to:

push!(LOAD_PATH, @__DIR__)

[Wikunia]

Btw I thing the error message Module Tmp not found in current path. is quite misleading. The module is actually in the current path, right? It isn't in the LOAD_PATH but for me current means the cwd (current working directory).

[rdeits]

I totally agree. Would you like me to come up with a better wording for it in this PR, or should we save that for the next one?

[Wikunia]

I don't mind. I think I would replace current path with LOAD_PATH. I think that makes it pretty straightforward. If someone doesn't know what that is he can google and probably find the solution quickly.

[rdeits]

How about "LOAD_PATH or Pkg.dir()", since it could be in either location?

[Wikunia]

Yes that's perfect! Thank you!

[rdeits]

Ok, I've made the change to "LOAD_PATH or Pkg.dir()"

[rdeits]

Hm, it looks like having nothing in the LOAD_PATH is actually a problem on v0.6:

julia> push!(LOAD_PATH, @__DIR__)
3-element Array{Any,1}:
 "/Applications/Julia-0.6.app/Contents/Resources/julia/local/share/julia/site/v0.6"
 "/Applications/Julia-0.6.app/Contents/Resources/julia/share/julia/site/v0.6"
 nothing

julia> using StaticArrays
ERROR: ArgumentError: unrecognized custom loader in LOAD_PATH: nothing
Stacktrace:
 [1] load_hook(::Void, ::String, ::String) at ./loading.jl:94
 [2] find_in_path(::String, ::Void) at ./loading.jl:116
 [3] find_in_node_path(::String, ::Void, ::Int64) at ./loading.jl:125
 [4] _require(::Symbol) at ./loading.jl:426
 [5] require(::Symbol) at ./loading.jl:398

julia> versioninfo()
Julia Version 0.6.0
Commit 903644385b (2017-06-19 13:05 UTC)
Platform Info:
  OS: macOS (x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0)
  CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2860QM CPU @ 2.50GHz
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  BLAS: libopenblas (USE64BITINT DYNAMIC_ARCH NO_AFFINITY Sandybridge)
  LAPACK: libopenblas64_
  LIBM: libopenlibm
  LLVM: libLLVM-3.9.1 (ORCJIT, sandybridge)

but everything is fine on v0.7. Is that still ok, since this is just a change to the 0.7+ manual?

[StefanKarpinski]

What is having nothing on LOAD_PATH supposed to do?

[rdeits]

It's not supposed to do anything. This came up because @__DIR__ in v0.7 returns the current directory, but in v0.6 returns nothing. So the recommendation that I'm adding to the manual (push!(LOAD_PATH, @__DIR__)) works fine on v0.7 but will cause the above error if people try to do it on v0.6. I'm just wondering if that's okay.

[fredrikekre]

This change won't end up in the v0.6 docs anyway, so should be ok.

[rdeits]

Ok, great!

[rdeits]

Is this good to go?

[vtjnash]

supplanted by #26804?

[rdeits]

I think the workflow-tips change would still be beneficial, but I'll see how it shakes out with the new package manager. Anyway, yeah, this seems to have gone stale.

[dstndstn]

On my vanilla OSX setup and Julia 1.0, the Workflow Tips section of the manual does not work as advertised; this PR would help immensely.