Project

alki-reload

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Automatic reloading of alki projects
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 Popularity
Downloads
15,031
Stars
0
Forks
0
Watchers
1
 Releases
Current version
0.3.4
Total releases
6
First release
2016-12-20
Latest release
2018-04-02
 Development
Primary Language
Ruby
Licenses
MIT
Average date of last 50 commits
2017-06-21
Reverse Dependencies
1

 Dependencies

Runtime

alki
~> 0.14.0
listen
~> 3.0
 Project Readme

Alki::Reload

Build Status

Provides auto-reload feature to Alki projects. Like the auto-reload feature in Ruby on Rails, when enabled it will monitor source files and whenever a change is detected, will reload the project.

Installation

Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:

gem 'alki-reload'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install alki-reload

Usage

To use Alki::Reload in an Alki project, it must be mounted in the assembly. By default, Alki::Reload will not actively watch files or actively hook into services. Setting enable to true will enable both.

config/assembly.rb
Alki do
  try_mount :reloader, 'alki/reload', enable: true
# ...
end

Naming Pitfalls

Alki::Reload attempts to be conservative in what it reloads. By default, it will only reload files which are in your project, and are either in the ruby load path or registered with Alki::Loader.

Additionally, Alki::Reload will only reload files where it can find a corresponding constant. This is done via a straightforward "classify" method which does not take abbreviations into account.

Examples of Classes that Alki::Reload will not reload

lib/my_project/foo.rb
class Foo
end

Expects Foo to be in the module MyProject.

lib/my_project/http_client.rb
module MyProject
 class HTTPClient
 end
end

Doesn’t know that "HTTP" is an acronym, so it expects class to be HttpClient.

Conditional usage

Because enabling reload can have a performance impact, typically it’s only enabled when in some sort of development mode.

config/assembly.rb
Alki do
  set(:development?) { ENV['APP_ENV'] != 'production' }

  try_mount :reloader, 'alki/reload' do
    set(:enable) { development? }
  end
# ...
end

In addition, using try_mount instead of the normal mount will only mount the reloader if the gem can be found, which can be controlled using Bundler.

Main Loops

One of the core issues in code reloading is when to actually do the reload. If your Assembly is called from some other code (such as a Rails application), then reloading can just be done between calls into the assembly.

But, if the entire application is running inside the assembly, then a way to reload the assembly while it’s still running is needed.

Most applications spend most of their time inside a "main loop". If it’s a server, it might be the loop listening for incoming data, if it’s a console application it might be the loop waiting for user input.

Because the main loop is always running, there is never an opportunity to reload it. Alki::Reload provides a feature to help work around this.

First off, because the service the main loop is in can’t be reloaded, it should be made as small and simple as possible, offloading all other functionality into secondary services that it takes as dependencies.

Second, it should be tagged with a main_loop tag. By tagging your main loop service, Alki::Reload will actively hook into the service and wrap it’s dependencies with wrapper objects that will pick up the new version of those dependencies whenever the project is reloaded.

Alki::Loader must be enabled for this feature to be active.

config/assembly.rb
Alki do
  mount :reloader, 'alki/reload', enable: true

  set :prompt, "> "
  service :handler do
    -> line { puts line }
  end

  tag :main_loop
  service :main do
    require 'readline_loop'
    ReadlineLoop.new prompt, handler
  end
  # ...
end
lib/readline_loop.rb
require 'readline'
class ReadlineLoop
  def initialize(prompt, handler)
    @prompt = prompt
    @handler = handler
  end

  def run
    while line = Readline.readline(@prompt,true)
      @handler.call line
    end
  end
end

In this example, our main loop is main.run. Because the main service is tagged even while it is running the prompt and handler can be changed and reloaded.

Watched Directories

By default, lib, config and any files or directories configured in Alki::Loader are watched.

Additional directories can be added by overriding the dirs element. Additional directories must also be in $LOAD_PATH.

config/assembly.rb
Alki do
  mount :reloader, 'alki/reload' do
    set(:enable) { true }
    set(:dirs) { original.dirs + ['app'] }
  end
# ...
end

Manual Reloading

In addition to watching for filesystem changes, a project can be reloaded manually by calling the reload func in the reloader. This works even when the reloader is not enabled.

config/assembly.rb
Alki do
  mount :reloader, 'alki/reload'
# ...
end
instance.reloader.reload # reload instance

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/alki-project/alki-reload. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.