[qmtest] Proposal: modules reload

[Mark Mitchell]

On Mon, 2003-04-21 at 03:05, Vladimir Prus wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> from time to run I run into a snag with QMTest. I start a gui, run a test and 
> it fails. The test uses custom test class, and I decide there's problem with 
> the test class itself. So I edit the module, but running gui does not notice 
> that the module source has changed. I have to shutdown/restart QMTest,
> which is not convenient. 
> 
> I propose that QMTest gui has a new command "reload modules", which
> will use builtin "reload" function on all known extension modules or allow to
> select modules to reload. 
> 
> If this idea is good from UI/functionality point of view, I can look at how it 
> can be implemented in code. Opinions?

I've thought about this in the past and never came to a definite
conclusion.  On the one hand, reloading the modules *should* work, but
I'm never sure it will always leave things in a consistent state.  (What
if there is global data in those modules, or data elsewhere that has
class types where the classes are defined in those modules?)

Another related problem is that if there is a bug in QMTest, which you
fix, you then have to restart everything to test your fix.

And yet another related problem is that it would be nice to be able to
switch databases (or, some day, use multiple databases at once) from the
GUI.  All of these require some kind of re-start capability.

Maybe a good place to start would be a "Restart" command on the QMTest
file menu that would just shut down QMTest, and restart it, on the same
port?

-- 
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery, LLC
mark at codesourcery.com