Flow: Global variables

[josebalius]

Maybe this has been asked already or it's not working for me, but I keep getting these errors:

/client/components/App.js:12:19,24: identifier Meteor
Unknown global name

How can i make Meteor global?

I have done flow start --lib ./lib which contains a file meteor.js that has declare var Meteor: any but it doesn't seem to work.

[josebalius]

So if i add declare var Meteor: any; to the files that contain the globals, the error goes away, is there anyway to do this globally for all files?

[briandipalma]

It seems to me that the solution is not to rely on globals but to use modules instead? Unless Meteor is being imported via a module loader?

[josebalius]

@briandipalma Well Meteor doesn't quite work that way (the environment provides a Meteor object on the client/server), but flow needs to have a way to define globals for it, while they may not be best practice it's something that a lot of applications are going to have.

[avikchaudhuri]

@josebalius Could you try again putting lib outside .? Maybe putting it in the same directory as source files is making Flow clobber the information that it is a global? :/ Will investigate, also let us know if the workaround doesn't work.

[josebalius]

@avikchaudhuri I tried putting it in the same folder as the other files (that reference the global), created a file called globals.js with the following:

/* @flow */
declare var Meteor: any;

But still got the same error, the other thing i was thinking, should I set the --lib property with an absolute path like we have to do .flowconfig for ignore / include ? I haven't tried that, I will now just in case.

[avikchaudhuri]

No, what I mean is, put globals.js somewhere _outside_ the folder which contains your regular files.

[josebalius]

@avikchaudhuri okay just tried that as well and no luck :(

[Eric-Wright]

@josebalius I ran into the same problem, then saw in the documentation that you need to specify the --lib argument even when running the check command. For example:

flow start --lib ../lib
flow check --lib ../lib

[josebalius]

@Eric-Wright thank you! that definitely fixed it :)

I think we can close this issue now, but it should be documented that you have to keep specifying the --lib argument when running flow check

[josebalius]

It would be nice if flow allowed you to run flow --lib ./lib without having to do a full flow check it's so slow....

[tcoopman]

@josebalius if you run flow start --lib ./lib and then run flow it will use the lib.

[josebalius]

@tcoopman you sure? if I run it like that, i get the global errors, it does not have the same result as flow check --lib ./lib

[tcoopman]

@josebalius just tested it with 0.1.1 and this works.

Are you sure the lib file get parsed correctly?

[josebalius]

@tcoopman It worked for you :( you don't get global errors? I think it is, i mean it works with flow check and i thought lib was supposed to be a folder?

[tcoopman]

Yeah it has to be a folder. So you first run flow start --lib lib/ and
then flow?

Maybe try again on a test directory to see that there is nothing wrong with
something else?

On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 21:59 Jose Garcia [email protected] wrote:

@tcoopman https://github.com/tcoopman It worked for you :( you don't
get global errors? I think it is, i mean it works with flow check and i
thought lib was supposed to be a folder?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
https://github.com/facebook/flow/issues/45#issuecomment-64036742.

[josebalius]

@tcoopman just verified it. Also verified I had version 0.1.1 just to double check and i do. Here is what i did:

File structure:

drwxr-xr-x  3 jgarcia  staff  102 Nov 22 20:08 lib
-rw-r--r--  1 jgarcia  staff   30 Nov 22 20:08 test.js

test.js

TestGlobal.run();

lib

-rw-r--r--  1 jgarcia  staff  29 Nov 22 20:08 global.js

global.js

declare var TestGlobal: any;

Test:

flow init

------------
flow start --lib ./lib
flow

/Users/jgarcia/Sites/flow-test/test.js:2:1,10: identifier TestGlobal
Unknown global name

Found 1 error

---------

flow start lib ./lib
flow check --lib ./lib

Found 0 errors

Let me know if you can reproduce.

[tcoopman]

I've taken your exact example and cannot reproduce:

flow init
flow start --lib ./lib
flow

No errors!

(Running it like without --lib does give an error)

I'm on Linux, maybe that could be the problem?

Also can you test this:

flow start --lib ./lib
flow status

What's the full output of flow status?

[josebalius]

@tcoopman

~/Sites/flow-test                                                                                                                                                                           
▶ flow start --lib ./lib
Spawned flow server (child pid=22957)
Logs will go to /var/folders/9k/tr3kf4zn70d5cbp8kzzdzjqw0000gp/T/flow_jgarcia/jgarcia-zSUserszSjgarciazSSiteszSflow-test.log

~/Sites/flow-test                                                                                                                                                                             
▶ flow status

/Users/jgarcia/Sites/flow-test/test.js:2:1,10: identifier TestGlobal
Unknown global name

Found 1 error

[tcoopman]

I thought that maybe the server stopped, I've had this happen once, but it looks like it is still running.

Maybe someone else on a Mac can check if they have the same problem?

[josebalius]

Anyone else? :/

[pizana68]

Mayb
On Nov 25, 2014 9:46 AM, "Jose Garcia" [email protected] wrote:

Anyone else? :/

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
https://github.com/facebook/flow/issues/45#issuecomment-64419620.

[josebalius]

@pizana68 are you having the same problem?

[josebalius]

@avikchaudhuri @tcoopman so I tried setting the --lib option in flow start with an absolute path instead of relative, and it works!

[tcoopman]

@josebalius can this issue be closed?

[josebalius]

@tcoopman yes sir :)