Getting started with libraries

[Graham Samuel]

Folks

Recent defences on the list of RunRev's capability with libraries has  
made me realise how much I've missed out by not organising my own  
work with libraries in mind. I would now like to make the move. but  
I'm finding it quite hard to decide how to get started. As in the old  
joke, to get there I shouldn't really have started from here... but  
there it is.

What I have is a few apps which work and have users etc, and which  
contain common elements. Up to now these common sections were created  
by wholesale copying of stacks and bits of code from a finished app  
to the next one to be developed. I find this is such an awkward  
process that I don't keep all the apps up to date in parallel. For  
example in App 1, I have devised a way for the user to register and  
enter a serial number to get a fully functional version of the  
program;  I copied this code into App 2, a process which was pretty  
clumsy in the first place because App 1 and App 2 can't have ANY  
stacks with the same name (unless I open two copies of RunRev, but  
for some reason I'm nervous of this idea). Then as I developed App 2,  
I improved on the stuff I got from App 1. But generally App 1 doesn't  
benefit because it's too much of a hassle to retrofit the improved  
code. Now if I did all this with libraries, I would be much better  
off, since the most up to date version of any library could be  
retrofitted without problems.

So for me the issue is how to reach this point from where I am today.  
Has anyone any advice about shifting my existing code into libraries  
without having to massively restructure my existing apps? So far all  
I have thought of is to remove the 'common' code to a library but to  
retain the handler that was in the original app simply as a wrapper -  
a wrapper handler would look like

on myOldHandler para1, para2
   do myLibraryStuff para1,para2
end myoldHandler

However I have been (I suppose) rather careless with ways of passing  
values, using various techniques including setting globals, specific  
fields etc. If the library is not to have too many side effects then  
I have to generalise those routines too, and that's the bit which I  
would like to do as efficiently as possible. Maybe it's just a messy  
job and that's all there is about it, but I'd like to know what other  
people think.

TIA

Graham
----------------------------------------
Graham Samuel / The Living Fossil Co. / UK and France