@importall - A macro to import all names for easy debugging

Often when you are debugging and testing a package it can be useful to be able to access all names in a module (whether they are exported or not), without having to prefix each identifier by the module name. It quickly becomes tiresome to have to prefix the module name for each identifier in the REPL, with code that looks like:

julia> import MyModule

julia> MyModule.ConstantA + MyModule.foo(2) + MyModule.bar("hi")

To save yourself from needlessly typing MyModule, the following @importall macro takes care of importing into the current namespace all the identifiers from a module, thereby allowing you to instead write:

julia> @importall MyModule

julia> ConstantA + foo(2) + bar("hi")

Saving yourself from countless typing MyModule.

Here’s the macro definition (inspired from this package altough they do different things):

macro importall(mod)
    quote
        try
            $(esc(mod))
        catch
            import $(mod)
        end
        for name in names($(esc(mod)), all=true)
            if name ∉ (:eval, :include, :__init__)
                @eval import .$(mod): $(Expr(:$, :name))
            end
        end
    end
end

I’ve placed this in my ~/.julia/config/startup.jl file.

I’ve found this particularly time saving when working with external libraries and testing code in the REPL and debugging tasks.

A less convenient way

Another way to go about the same thing, which I find significantly less REPL friendly, is to wrap the code in an @eval block, as follows:

julia> @eval MyModule begin
    ConstantA + foo(2) + bar("hi")
end