IDE 'Reset'

[Richard Gaskin]

David Glass wrote:

> I often am working on more than one project at a time, and am trying to
> come up with a way to do it in LC, particularly when using the GLX
> framework which creates a bunch of support stacks.
>
> LC doesn't allow duplicate stack names, so when I go to open another
> project I get the 'Close, Purge, Cancel' (or whatever it is) message,
> and I have to select Purge in order to completely remove the first
> project's stacks, and load the second project's stacks.
>
> The brute force way would be to have multiple copies of LC running, but
> that is not really ideal, IMO.

I gave up idealism in my 20s in favor of mere pragmatism. To paraphrase 
the old saw, "best" is the enemy of "shipping". ;)

For better or worse, using multiple copies of an LC install lets me work 
on multiple projects simultaneously with complete severance between 
them, all the way down to common global names (like gAppStack*) I tend 
to use in my apps.

Since v3.something (?) you can even copy controls between different 
instances of LC, so you get all the benefits of working in a single 
memory space without the complications.

Additionally, I tend to keep the last several versions of LC installed 
to work on different projects according to which has been field-tested 
in our apps, upgrading only when we're in another Beta round.  I've also 
found keeping multiple versions installed invaluable for verifying 
regressions between engine versions.

So while I have them installed and sitting in my Dock (OS X) or launcher 
(Ubuntu), dropping stack files on them to open them in separate 
instances is a breeze.



* gAppStack is a great way for everything in your project to know which 
stack is the mainstack of the standalone, useful for all sorts of things 
like setting up paths to Components folders for storing libraries and 
externals.

So if you don't mind another plug for the Rev Interoperability Project 
(RIP), one of the initiatives in progress with that working group now is 
a library I'm developing to help with updating app components and more, 
using a single global variable to keep track of the necessary info.

Like other RIP initiatives, this library will make it easier for 
developers of libraries and behaviors to share their work among multiple 
projects, and will be available for free under the liberal terms of the 
MIT license.

The Rev Interoperability Project has more than a hundred members, many 
of whom contribute ideas and code for the benefit of the community as a 
whole.  Membership is open to all who are interested:

<http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/revInterop/>

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  LiveCode Journal blog: http://LiveCodejournal.com/blog.irv