In the manual/FAQ/discussions, workspace() is the recommended way of getting a "clean slate", that should be equivalent to restarting Julia (except for LastMain etc).

Arguably, workspace() then should also reload .juliarc.jl in certain cases.

For example, having an optional reload-startup argument would make sense, with the following options:

1. :auto, which is the default. Reload unless the process was started with --startup-file=no, or -f.
2. false: never reload.
3. true: reload unconditionally.