Load the sparse shared constructor support at package-level

aesara/__init__.py

@@ -176,6 +176,7 @@ def get_scalar_constant_value(v):
 
 # isort: off
 import aesara.tensor.random.var
+import aesara.sparse
 from aesara.scan import checkpoints
 from aesara.scan.basic import scan
 from aesara.scan.views import foldl, foldr, map, reduce

tests/sparse/test_sparse.py

+import numpy as np
+import pytest
+
+import aesara
+from aesara.compile import SharedVariable
+
+
+sp = pytest.importorskip("scipy", minversion="0.7.0")
+
+
+def test_shared_basic():
+    x = aesara.shared(sp.sparse.csr_matrix(np.eye(100)), name="blah", borrow=True)
+
+    assert isinstance(x, SharedVariable)