Invoking functions from nested modules in a script module do not always trigger a module to autoload

Question

If I create a manifest module with nested modules, exported functions from all nested modules after the first do not appear in the list of available commands and don\'t trigger

Answer 1

I had this line in my .psd1 file

FunctionsToExport = 'FuncFromMainPsm1 FuncFromSecondPsm1'

which was what I inferred from the line generated by Powershell Tools for Visual Studio:

# Functions to export from this module
FunctionsToExport = '*'

This caused my Get-Module -ListAvailable to show what looked like the right thing

Script     1.0        MyMModule                  FuncFromMainPsm1 FuncFromSecondPsm1

But when I called FuncFromSecondPsm1 I'd get "The term 'FuncFromSecondPsm1' is not recognized...".

So I changed my export line to

FunctionsToExport = @('FuncFromMainPsm1', 'FuncFromSecondPsm1')

And now it all works. I can call both functions after my module loads, whether via autoload or Import-Module.

I have tried this with and without both ModuleList and FileList set. They make no difference.

Answer 2

Hy Paul, Hy Luken,

After struggling for a few hours on this topic (with the implicit and declared manifest approach), I opted for the auto generated manifest. In essence, I wrote a ps1 script that generates the manifest, in two steps:

1. with some 'business' logic, discover what you want to expose
2. generate the module manifest

IMHO, Advantage of that approach: I 'fully' understand and master the exposure of the module content.

below you can find a PS code snippet that follows this approach, hoping it will benefit to other people.

# module discovery
$rootModule = "WdCore";
$modules = Get-ChildItem *.psm1;
$nestedmodulesNames = $modules | where { $_.BaseName -ne "WdCore"} | % { $_.BaseName } ;

# functions discovery
$modulesLines = $modules | Get-Content;
$functionsLines = $modulesLines | where { $_.contains("Function") };

$functionNamePattern = '^Function\s+(?<name>([a-z][0-9|A-Z|-]+))\s?{.*$';
$functionNames = $functionsLines | where { $_ -match $functionNamePattern } | select { $Matches['name'] } | % { $_.' $Matches[''name''] '};

# generate manifest
New-ModuleManifest `
    -Path ./WdTools.psd1 -RootModule $rootModule `
    -ModuleVersion '1.0' `
    -NestedModules $nestedmodulesNames `
    -FunctionsToExport $functionNames `
    -Guid '57D7F213-2316-4786-8D8A-3E4B9262B1E5' `
    -Author 'Blaise Braye' `
    -Description 'This module provides working directory tooling' `
    -PowerShellVersion '3.0' -ClrVersion '4.0';