Getting rid of the "edit-compile-run-cycle" for Kawa

["Ethan Herdrick" <info at reatlas dot com>]

Hi -

We really want to improve our dev environment for our Kawa web app.
The main problem is the "edit-compile-run-cycle".  Even though Kawa is
a great language, this style of development makes it feel like we are
just using Java.  It slows us down.  What I want is to change some
function defined in a static module and simply refresh any page in our
app that uses that function and see the result of the change.

In trying to achieve this I've made a simple macro "require/smart"
that will expand to (require <foo>) if the system is in production
mode, and expand to (load "\some-path\foo.scm") if in development
mode.  Of course, our existing code behaves somewhat differently when
loaded instead of required.  I've been working through this but I'm
not sure what the ultimate result will be.  I might be overlooking
some fatal flaw in this plan.  This technique does work fine in a very
simple proof of concept with a very simple tree of dependencies made
up of three simple files of definitions.

In an old post to this list (found here:
http://www.sourceware.org/ml/kawa/2006-q4/msg00002.html )  Per wrote:

"...you can:  (require "file-name")  and it automatically compile sit,
as a module, and recompiles if it has changed.  It updates the global
environment. (However, there is no support for updating existing
values -such as if an existing value references an updated function -
but that could be added.)"

That would be fantastic.  What would need to be done to add that?
Could it understand dependencies, i.e. recompile a class if a class it
depends on has been recompiled?  That kind of dynamic dev environment
- combined with Kawa's impressive performance as a compiled language -
would really be amazing.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

-Ethan

-- 
Ethan Herdrick
www.biographicon.com - Everyone's biography.