This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: Dynamically modding the server Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

Bill Clementson talks about dynamically changing a Lisp Server - this is something Smalltalk does very, very well also. I do something similar with the blog server - but I don't (typically) have GUI access to it - it runs as a headless server, many miles from where I live. So how do I dynamically update it?

• Test a patch on a local version of the server so I can verify that it works
• File the code out (i.e., push it to a file that can be loaded and compiled into the server
• Version the new code off into the source code control system, and drop a new version of the loadable component that the patch belongs to. This is so that I can get the server going with the correct code the next time it gets restarted
• FTP the code up to the server, and into the appropriate directories
• Using a defined remote API, kick the server so that it will load the patch

No fuss, no muss, no restart - and problem solved.