# Revise doesn't work with macros?
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/revise-doesnt-work-with-macros/124826
**Category:** General Usage
**Tags:** development, revise
**Created:** [January 16, 2025, 11:40am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/revise-doesnt-work-with-macros/124826 "2025-01-16T11:40:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@filchristou](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/filchristou)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2025, 11:40am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/revise-doesnt-work-with-macros/124826/1 "2025-01-16T11:40:16Z")
Can it be true that Revise doesn’t work with macros.
I experienced the problem when developing a package that has functions that use a macro. Then when I change the macro, the functions are not updated.
But a similar minimal working example can also be shown with `includet`:
```julia
# revisemacro.jl
macro returniffalse(verbose, ex)
quote
if !($(esc(ex)))
if $(esc(verbose))
println("A False expression in $(@ __FILE__ ):$(@ __LINE__ ): ", $(string(ex)))
end
return false
end
end
end
function afunction()
avariable = 23
@returniffalse(true, avariable == 20+1)
end
```
Open a REPL and do
```julia
julia> using Revise;
julia> includet("revisemacro.jl");
julia> afunction()
A False expression in /home/pakis/Playground/julia/ReviseMacro/revisemacro.jl:5: avariable == 20 + 1
false
```
Then if I change the macro in `revisemacro.jl` the function is not updated
```julia
# revisemacro.jl
macro returniffalse(verbose, ex)
...
# println("A False expression in $(@ __FILE__ ):$(@ __LINE__ ): ", $(string(ex)))
println("NEW STUFF $(@ __FILE__ ):$(@ __LINE__ ): ", $(string(ex)))
...
end
...
```
The REPL still prints the old information
```julia
julia> afunction()
A False expression in /home/pakis/Playground/julia/ReviseMacro/revisemacro.jl:5: avariable == 20 + 1
false
```
---
### Author:  [@Benny](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Benny)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2025, 1:46pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/revise-doesnt-work-with-macros/124826/2 "2025-01-16T13:46:32Z")
It’s documented in the Limitations page:
> [Macros and generated functions](https://timholy.github.io/Revise.jl/stable/limitations/#Macros-and-generated-functions)
> If you change a macro definition or methods that get called by `@generated` functions outside their `quote` block, these changes will not be propagated to functions that have already evaluated the macro or generated function.
> You may explicitly call `revise(MyModule)` to force reevaluating every definition in module `MyModule`. Note that when a macro changes, you have to revise all of the modules that _use_ it.
`Revise.revise` of course won’t work for a `includet` file because it’s not a tracked _module_.
Revise only makes it easier to do the same interactive evaluations you can manually run in the REPL, and despite the extra options for more reevaluations, that can never behave like reloading the session and evaluating everything from scratch. For example, you can’t successfully change the annotated type of a global variable. Redefinitions of methods called by other methods work smoothly because the call is _not executed_ during definition. If you edit a method definition, previous calls are not reevaluated; the same applies to macro methods. Here’s a macro-less example:
```julia
foo() = 1
_foo::Int = foo()
bar() = _foo # instead of bar() = foo()
```
Even with ` __revise_mode__ = :eval`, `_foo::Int = foo()` is not reevaluated when `foo() = 2.3` is edited because its expression was not changed; if it was, it’d fail anyway.
---
### Author:  [@JamesNZ](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/JamesNZ)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2025, 11:01pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/revise-doesnt-work-with-macros/124826/3 "2025-01-17T23:01:21Z")
My preferred workaround to this is to have the implementation in a separate function which is called by the macro:
```julia
function _foo(expr)
return :(x = $expr)
end
macro foo(expr)
_foo(expr)
end
```
That way you can still take advantage of Revise, and in some cases it makes testing easier because you can just call the function with different inputs.
---
### Author:  [@Benny](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Benny)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2025, 12:25am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/revise-doesnt-work-with-macros/124826/4 "2025-01-18T00:25:00Z")
Editing `_foo` doesn’t seem to re-evaluate `@foo` calls in other methods (example below) like filchristou wanted, could you elaborate with a demo? PS I think we need `esc(_foo(expr))`.
```julia
function bar(y)
@foo y
x
end
```