Got a strange error on one of my saves:
Big_Brother/stdlib/area/position.lua: 178: Require can't be used outside of control.lua parsing

Having this as well in 0.17.58

I have found a work around, and everything appears to work.

In control.lua add this line near the top
require 'stdlib/area/area'
I put it on line 2.

In stdlib/area/position.lua change line 178 from
local Area = require("stdlib/area/area")
to
local Area = package.loaded["stdlib/area/area"]

The first change will ensure that area is loaded and can be accessed from packages. The second change uses the data per-loaded by the first.

that workaround doesn't do the trick for me - in addition i wonder which stdlib this mod uses the one inside its directory or the other one in my mod folder ?!

I can confirm that workaround works nicely for me - I PR'd it: https://github.com/Afforess/Big_Brother/pull/13

Happy to upload a zip somewhere if it helps

Thanks for noticing - I uploaded a new version with umbrios / dominics changes.