REPL mode gives different behavior when activating with @

[MilesCranmer]

There is different behavior when activating an environment with "@" as the first character, between REPL mode and functional mode:

julia> pkg"activate @test"
  Activating new project at `~/.julia/environments/test`

julia> Pkg.activate("@test")
  Activating new project at `~/Documents/@test`

If this is intended behavior, what is the correct way to activate an env in the Julia depot using Pkg's functional mode?
(Nevermind, it's just shared = true)

[mkitti]

I actually think this is a bug. The alternative version is pkg"activate @test", but that is still meant for interactive use.

[DilumAluthge]

Duplicate of #2367?

[DilumAluthge]

I'm inclined to agree with @fredrikekre's comment here: #2367 (comment)

[MilesCranmer]

This does make sense in theory, but it's tripped up a few people now (enough for two GH issues) so it might be good to at least add a warning to activate("@... that the user should use shared instead.

Also, regarding this:

Pkg.pkg"activate @global_env"

Is there a way to pass an IOStream here? This is the reason I am using the functional API rather than REPL.

[fredrikekre]

Use the shared argument.

[MilesCranmer]

I would just add that it does still feel like unexpected behavior that an identical string passed to the REPL version and the functional version should give entirely different paths, (keeping in mind that "@" is a valid character in filenames). At the very least passing "@" to the functional API should raise an error or warning.

[mkitti]

it might be good to at least add a warning to activate("@... that the user should use shared instead.

I think this is a reasonable consideration. You could suppress the warning with shared = false since that would be explicit.

[DilumAluthge]

#2984

[MilesCranmer]

Beat me to the PR by 1 minute @DilumAluthge :) Thanks!