# Prevent Pkg.test from executing parent's \`@main\` function
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/prevent-pkg-test-from-executing-parents-main-function/134617
**Category:** New to Julia
**Tags:** question, testing, main
**Created:** [December 17, 2025, 6:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/prevent-pkg-test-from-executing-parents-main-function/134617 "2025-12-17T18:09:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@alametti](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/alametti)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2025, 6:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/prevent-pkg-test-from-executing-parents-main-function/134617/1 "2025-12-17T18:09:47Z")
When I test a local package using the `test` instruction in the `Pkg` REPL, the function called by the `@main` macro gets executed after the tests.
For example:
`src/Foo.jl`:
```julia
module Foo
main() = println("hello from main function")
export main
(@main)(args) = main()
end
```
`test/runtests.jl`:
```julia
using Foo, Test
@testset "Hello from tests" begin
@test true
end
```
Results in:
```julia-auto
(Foo) pkg> test
Testing Foo
# [...]
Testing Running tests...
Test Summary: | Pass Total Time
Hello from tests | 1 1 0.0s
hello from main function
Testing Foo tests passed
```
Is there any way to suppress the execution of `@main` in this scenario? In my real use-case, it is an expensive function. My apologies if this is obvious; I wasn’t able to find how to do it.
---
### Author:  [@Benny](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Benny)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2025, 6:51pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/prevent-pkg-test-from-executing-parents-main-function/134617/2 "2025-12-17T18:51:12Z")
First thing, the `@main` macro isn’t calling a function. `(@main)` itself is a macro call isolated by parentheses, and it does some background registration before resolving as the name `main`. So, `(@main)(args) = main()` literally defines `(main)(args) = main()`, and you can see this 2nd method:
```julia-auto
julia> methods(Foo.main)
# 2 methods for generic function "main" from Main.Foo:
[1] main()
@ REPL[2]:3
[2] main(args)
@ REPL[2]:7
```
This isn’t a trivial detail. If you defined a `main(args)` instead of `main()` to begin with, this 2nd method would overwrite it.
Second and more pertinent to the issue, I’m pretty sure the implicit import `using Foo` via `export main` is triggering the call when the test process ends. You can stop that with explicit named imports, `import Foo` to only import the name `Foo`, or removing `export main`. The last one seems to be the most appropriate: `export main` is not necessary for [terminal Pkg apps](https://pkgdocs.julialang.org/v1/apps/), and although it’s mentioned at the end of the section for the [`julia` terminal command](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/command-line-interface/#The-Main.main-entry-point), it’s immediately and vaguely discouraged so I don’t really know why it’s there. A plainer problem is if you have 2 packages with their own `main`s, implicit imports into the same module will ignore those names because of the conflict, so it’s better to reserve `export` for fairly unique names. If you do want an import to trigger a `main` call, you can pick one by name with `using Foo: main`.
---
### Author:  [@alametti](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/alametti)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2025, 7:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/prevent-pkg-test-from-executing-parents-main-function/134617/3 "2025-12-17T19:18:34Z")
Thanks!
I think that the module structure I was trying to implement may be correct in other languages but just isn’t the right way to do things in Julia.
---
### Author:  [@Benny](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Benny)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2025, 7:28pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/prevent-pkg-test-from-executing-parents-main-function/134617/4 "2025-12-17T19:28:06Z")
It looks mostly correct to me, I only spotted the 2 problems mentioned earlier and only 1 needed an edit.