Depends_on does not work with chained dependencies

[cstjean]

depends_on does not work at all for me, in fact, given

arequire("A")
arequire("B", depends_on=["A"])

The second line will disable any reloading for "A" because it calls arequire("A"; command=:on_depends), which sets files[".../A.jl"].should_reload to false here and that is a necessary condition for reloading.

In any case, I'm happy to rework the logic and fix it myself, I just want to make sure that I'm clear on the desired interface. If I have modules A, B, and C, B depending on A and C depending on B, I assume that I should write

arequire("A")
arequire("B", depends_on=["A"])
arequire("C", depends_on=["B"])

and modifying A will trigger updates to A, B and C. Is that correct?

[jdlangs]

I came here to post this same issue. I get the behavior I want regarding dependencies if I hard code should_reload to always be true. It's not clear to me why it should ever be false.

[malmaud]

I'm about to modernize this package to work with Julia .4, and in the process will fix this.

[malmaud]

I am sure at some point I had a reason for the should_reload mechanic, but whatever it was, it does seem erroneous now.

[malmaud]

Ah, I remember now. The situation should_reload=false is useful in is if you want a.jl to reload whenever b.jl changes, but b.jl is not a stand-alone file that could be included on its own (for example, it relies on some constants defined in a). It's a common situation in packages.

So if you both want a.jl to reload when b.jl changes, but also b.jl to reload whenever b.jl changes, the proper code is

arequire("b")
arequire("a", depens_on=["b"])

It was a bug that this wasn't working before, fixed now.