FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

Unloading modules.

 
Post new topic   Reply to topic     Forum Index -> MiniD
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
csauls



Joined: 27 Mar 2004
Posts: 278

PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 8:18 pm    Post subject: Unloading modules. Reply with quote

Is there, or could there be, any way to un-load, or even re-load, a MiniD module? This would be nice for long-lifetime programs that want to allow "realtime" editing of user code. Smile
_________________
Chris Nicholson-Sauls
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address Yahoo Messenger
JarrettBillingsley



Joined: 20 Jun 2006
Posts: 457
Location: Pennsylvania!

PostPosted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 6:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I hadn't thought of that. Something that's a bit tricky to deal with though, is: say you have a.b and a.b.c. (Modules == packages, so this is legal) If you unload a.b, there's no real way to keep a.b.c loaded as well, since you don't really know what symbols belong to a.b and which belong to a.b.c. I suppose from an unloading point of view, unloading a.b also unloading a.b.c makes sense, but then you'd have to reload both of them..

Now, reloading. That might allow for just about the same level of utility but without the trickiness of having to mess with subordinate modules. Although there's also the risk of having the module namespace be "polluted" with old symbols from previous incarnations of the module that were removed in a later version. Hm.

In either case, though, there'd have to be a search for any loaded subordinate modules, since looping through the symbol table looking for namespaces isn't sufficient (since you can define your own namespaces and all). Because of the search, the mechanism will be able to flag certain symbols as "don't remove me", and then remove everything else from the symbol table.

I could see this working.

The only other issue I can think of right now, and I don't think there's much of a solution to this, is if some other piece of code caches a reference to one of this module's functions in some way. So if this were a moth module, and it had some crazy transcendental function that someone else used as an upvalue for a nested function, i.e. "function makeSequence(f) { local i = 0; return function() { i++; return f(i); }; } local foo = makeSequence(mymath.tanhxyzx);". Now that closure references a function from the old module. If that function is subsequently replaced, this closure will still reference the old function, but code which explicitly names the function will use the new. (This problem isn't really unique to this feature, but I'd imagine it'd come up a lot more often with this than in other cases.)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic     Forum Index -> MiniD All times are GMT - 6 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group