Parameterized load() statements?

[thoughtpolice]

I have:

load("@bxl//hello.bxl", _hello_main = "main", _hello_args = "args")
hello = bxl(impl = _hello_main, cli_args = _hello_args)

load("@bxl//licenses.bxl", _licenses_main = "main", _licenses_args = "args")
license_check = bxl(impl = _licenses_main, cli_args = _licenses_args)

# ad infinitum...

I want:

files = {
    "hello": "@bxl//hello.bxl",
    # ...
}

for (name, path) in files.items():
    load(path, _main = "main", _args = "args")
    load_symbols({ name: bxl(impl = _main, cli_args = _args) })

---

But this currently doesn't work. I suspect there are pretty good reasons for this. But would something like this ever be achievable?

Part of the issue I think is just that the API for 'load' is awkward here, because I think it's supposed to introduce the symbols into the module context, not the local scope. But I really just want locally bound names here. So having something like e = load_single_expr(path, name) would be nice. But again I assume there are reasons for this.

[ndmitchell]

Why are you defining all your bxl rules in the same file? Would it be easier to have them in separate files? Is this your #86 approach? Could you change that alias so it was $1.bxl:$1?

We follow the Starlark standard from https://github.com/bazelbuild/starlark/blob/master/spec.md, so our usual way of extending would be to propose additions to the language. This does seem quite a departure from the existing approach though.

[thoughtpolice]

I was mostly doing it to keep some code centralized in top.bxl, but I just simplified the example a bunch here. That said, I figured it would be a lot of rigamarole to get this working since it seems like this is a pretty fundamental change, so I figured I'd just open a ticket and ask. :)

So I think for now I'll just do some refactoring another way and close this. In the future a parameterized load() statement might be useful but another ticket is probably better for that, since this case can be handled another way. (I mean I can probably think of some good use cases if you gave me some time, but I don't have any other ones right now.)