# Enabling Magento 2 modules

**As a Magento developer, you know that enabling a Magento module can be done via the command `bin/magento module:enable Foo_Bar`. However, this does not take module dependencies properly into account. Because of this shortcoming, this document discusses different means to enable modules and all their dependencies.**

## The problem
Module dependencies are not properly tracked by Magento. When you enable module `Example_A` which has a dependency with module `Example_B`, enabling module `Example_A` does not automatically enable module `Example_B`. Within the `etc/module.xml` file of module `Example_A`, the XML node `<sequence>` points to other modules to be loaded before module `Example_A`. But that `<sequence>` is not necessarily a dependency tree.

```xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:Module/etc/module.xsd">
    <module name="Example_A">
        <sequence>
            <module name="Example_B"/>
        </sequence>
    </module>
</config>
```

With Loki, we tend to treat the `<sequence>` as a dependency tree anyway. If a module `Example_A` mentions a module `Example_B` in its `<sequence>`, both modules should be enabled.

## Just running `bin/magento setup:upgrade`
A lot of Magento developers bump into this. And the usual approach is to just run the CLI command `bin/magento setup:upgrade`. This command runs the database upgrade scripts. But - coincidentally - it also enables any module that is detected and that is not yet registered in `app/etc/config.php` yet.

This is not wrong. It is just that running database upgrades to just enable a module feels a bit off.

## Putting grep to the rescue
Another mechanism might be to use the output of one command `bin/magento module:status | grep Loki` as the input of another command `bin/magento module:enable`.

This enables all modules with the word `Loki` in them:
```bash
bin/magento module:enable `bin/magento module:status | grep Loki`
```

This enables all modules with the word `Loki` or `Yireo` in them:
```bash
bin/magento module:enable `bin/magento module:status | grep -E 'Yireo|Loki'`
```

## Using Yireo_EnableModuleSequence
Another solution is to use a separate command that does the job better. The [Yireo_EnableModuleSequence](https://github.com/yireo/Yireo_EnableModuleSequence) offers a command `module:sequence` that tracks down the `<sequence>` of a given module. And the sequence of those modules. And the sequence of those modules. And then enables them all:

```bash
bin/magento module:sequence LokiCheckout_Core
```

See [https://github.com/yireo/Yireo_EnableModuleSequence](https://github.com/yireo/Yireo_EnableModuleSequence)