# No documentation for Base packages at REPL help prompt

**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/no-documentation-for-base-packages-at-repl-help-prompt/3068
**Category:** General Usage
**Tags:** documentation
**Created:** [April 5, 2017, 3:19pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/no-documentation-for-base-packages-at-repl-help-prompt/3068 "2017-04-05T15:19:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Fab](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/fab/32/907_2.png) [@Fab](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Fab)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2017, 3:19pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/no-documentation-for-base-packages-at-repl-help-prompt/3068/1 "2017-04-05T15:19:24Z")

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Hi, when one presses the ? in the REPL to get the help prompt, and then e.g. tries Pkg or Dates, one only gets

```julia
help?> Pkg
search: Pkg

  No documentation found.

  No README.md found for module Base.Pkg.

```

It would be nice if there’d be at least a few lines, and/or a link to the package doc. Could one just add a README.md into, say,

[https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/tree/master/base/pkg](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/tree/master/base/pkg)  
?

Would that be picked up? (I’m building Julia and the doc locally now, but it takes a while…)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![stevengj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/stevengj/32/71_2.png) [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2017, 5:49pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/no-documentation-for-base-packages-at-repl-help-prompt/3068/2 "2017-04-14T17:49:35Z")

</div>

The error message should probably be changed to “No docstring or README.md file found for module Base.Pkg”. The help first looks for a docstring associated the module, and then if that isn’t found it looks for a README file (since most external packages have these).

The right way to fix this is just to add a docstring, which is just a string on the line immediately before the `module Pkg ... end` in the Julia source code.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Fab](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/fab/32/907_2.png) [@Fab](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Fab)
#### Post date: [April 18, 2017, 8:28am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/no-documentation-for-base-packages-at-repl-help-prompt/3068/3 "2017-04-18T08:28:57Z")

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Thanks Steve, I’ve added rudimentary doc strings for Base/Pkg and Base/Dates, and amended the error msg as you suggested:  
[https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/pull/21429](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/pull/21429)

```julia
help?> Pkg
search: Pkg

  The Pkg module provides package management for Julia. Try Pkg.status() for a list of installed pkgs,
  Pkg.add("<pkg name>") to add a package, Pkg.update() to update your packages.

  Please see the docs for package management for more information.

```