Re: Package unloading

Derek Fountain wrote:
What is the relationship between the file "foo.tcl" and the package
"mypackage" ?

foo.tcl is a file full of procs that make up the functionality of mypackage. It's source'ed via autoload/auto_index when a proc in it is needed.

Ah. That's the key. Auto-loading is the feature of the problem making
this difficult.

I'd encourage you to examine just what it is you think auto-loading is
doing for you. Most of the justifications for it I can imagine have
passed from the scene. Simplest answer, at least long term, might be
"Stop Doing That".

If you do need or want to keep auto-loading, then you'll need to actually delete commands in order to force the auto-loader to load
them over again. If your package follows recommended conventions, that
should be a simple matter of [namespace delete ::mypackage]. [*]

Yes, I'm doing my package loading in what I thought was the "standard" way, but maybe it's only standard to me because that's how I've always done it.

I would describe it as doing packages in the "Tcl 7 way" myself. It
works, but there's better choices now.

I think adding something like Brian's 'reload' to my package loading is going to be the best way.

proc reload {p args} {
# auto_reset ;# Only if your edits invalidate a tclIndex file
catch {namespace delete ::$p} ;# safety if unconventional
package forget $p
package require $p {*}$args
}

[*] There is a third way. If you want to have auto-loading as a feature, but don't want the burden of [namespace delete] during iterative development, you can implement auto-loading for yourself with stub-proc definitions of your commands. Not making use of [unknown] or auto* at all.

--
| Don Porter Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division |
| donald.porter@xxxxxxxx Information Technology Laboratory |
| http://math.nist.gov/~DPorter/ NIST |
|______________________________________________________________________|
.

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