Notes/Domino 6 and 7 Forum : Lotusscript "optional-loading" of classlibraries

Here's a rather involved wish...

The problem is this. Imagine you have 40+ lotusscript script libraries, each containing a lotusscript class. There's a "main" factory class, which loads them all. 15,000 lines or so of lotusscript library takes a *long* time to load - between 10-40 seconds on an "average" machine. Compiling takes even longer. (Please, allow us to switch off the compiler when we press <ESC> from the lotusscript editor ! Or at least only compile when we want to !)

Okay - we're worked around it by using "Dynamic Loading" - writing self-modifying lotusscript code which loads on demand. However, you loose all that lovely strong type checking. Its kinda funky, it does work. Is it "vanilla" ? No.

So...

(Still with me ? Dont worry - it wont take too much longer!).

Now when I load an LSX library, I can put a "*" in front of the name:
use "*idm.dll"
for instance, and the compiler will use it for (some limited) typechecking. And more importantly, the client wont load it till it needs it. If it cant find it, it'll throw a particular run-time error, which I can trap. Good.

So - can we have this for general lotusscript libraries as well ? Can we put:

use "*myScriptLib"

and only (at run time) have the library loaded if its referenced ?

Okay - this is not a trivial request. But it would allow faster user interaction, stronger type checking, etc, etc. How many other people would find this useful ? Anyone else out there writing HUGE lotusscript applications ?

Is it in there already ? (That'd be sneaky, eh ?)

Whaddaythink ?

Cheers

---* Bill
http://www.billbuchan.com