WIP: RNG functionality as modules

[ViralBShah]

I decided to junk my earlier attempt at integrating the RNG modules in base. I am trying to get it to work standalone to start with, and expect something like the following to work before I merge into base:

julia> load("rng_librandom.jl")
julia> load("rng.jl")
julia> import RNG
julia> RNG.librandom_init()
julia> RNG.rand()

Currently, this is what I get:

julia> load("rng_librandom.jl")

julia> load("rng.jl")
LibRandom not defined
 in load_now at util.jl:232
 in load_now at util.jl:244
 in require at util.jl:174
at /Users/viral/julia/extras/rng.jl:107
 in load_now at util.jl:255
 in require at util.jl:174

julia> load("rng.jl")

julia> import RNG

julia> RNG.librandom_init()
stderrEntropy pool not available to seed RNG, using ad-hoc entropy sources.
exec: No such file or directory
in srand: LibRandom not defined
 in srand at /Users/viral/julia/extras/rng.jl:87
 in librandom_init at /Users/viral/julia/extras/rng.jl:33

[JeffBezanson]

Every module does contain a reference to itself (i.e. Mod.Mod), but it is not exported by default:

julia> module Bar
       end

julia> import Bar.*

julia> Bar
Bar not defined

The idea was simply to export nothing by default, but maybe this consequence is unintuitive.

[staticfloat]

May I ask why we need to have an explicit librandom.init() call? Shouldn't we have some kind of automatic initialization function that's called via the import keyword?

[JeffBezanson]

Yes we probably need something like _init that is always called at load time. Lots of C libraries require some kind of mylib_init call and this should be automated.