Now, let's say that I want to do something as nebulously-defined as
"Reload all the scripts from disk, but keep the current mutated State."
What insurmountable problems are going to prevent this from working in
any reasonable fashion?
I use hot script-reloading in all my projects, with the simple rule:
* To reload: just re-run the script
It is the script's responsibility to know that it might be reloaded in
this way and "do the right thing" with respect to the global state.
Doing the right thing typically means replacing functions (otherwise
there would be no point in reloading) and not touching data. Could be as
simple as:
# Instead of
MyClass = class()
MyClass.do_stuff = function ...
# we write
MyClass = MyClass or class()
MyClass.do_stuff = function ...
If you introduce this policy early, make sure that everybody uses it,
and that "reload" is used frequently, then any reload-related bugs
should be discovered and fixed quickly.
I think this is a lot simpler than creating a system where the scripts
"don't know" that they might be reloaded and *you* have to do all the
work to make sure that nothing breaks when they are.
