Proposal: allow opening files from the current project globally

[zth]

This is for discussion/a proposal.

We have a situation right now where you can use -open in bsc-flags to open modules globally. This is quite useful in many cases. However, you're only able to open modules from external dependencies, not modules from your current project, as that would create a circular dependency as it'd also be opened in itself. This PR changes that so that the globally opened module won't be opened in itself.

I'm not sure if this is something we want to allow, nor what the consequences would be. But, it would be useful in many scenarios given that you could put together your own globally available little "stdlib". The usefulness might be a bit negated by the fact that it'd be quite restricted - you couldn't reference other files in your project as those would get the open injected, and by that create a circular dep. It might also cause excessive compilation times when you change your globally opened file, as all project files will now depend on that.

So, unclear if the upsides beat the downsides.

Comments and discussion welcome!

[fhammerschmidt]

Just to clarify: You can use open for your own namespaced packages in a npm workspace repo. They don't need to be externally installed deps.

[DZakh]

Yeah, this is how we do it

[cknitt]

This would certainly be practical as not everyone would want to have an npm/yarn workspace setup just to be able to globally open a module from the current project.

Will test it when I have some time.

[zth]

I'm thinking this doesn't hurt to merge, even if there are other solutions and this isn't optimal, it still feels like it should be allowed.

What do you think @DZakh @fhammerschmidt @cknitt ?

[cknitt]

I like it! Sorry that I haven't actually tested it yet, I'll try to have a look tomorrow.

[DZakh]

Yes, I also think it's a good feature. And I can't remember the cases, but there were a few times when I needed it.

[DZakh]

Should there be some work on rewatch side to add support for this?

[cknitt]

Just tested, works fine! 👍

[zth]

Should there be some work on rewatch side to add support for this?

I don't think that's needed, this is in the compiler itself.