(1) the basic concepts are clear (and have been for a long time):

- when a class initialize method is loaded, it is executed afterwards, if and only if the source code changed

- there are startUp[:] and shutDown[:] and SessionManager to handle images coming up, saving and going down

With these tools you can build any behaviour you want.

I am not sure we need something else, except maybe more education


(2) the problem is much larger than just the class initialize method, since that can call other methods (like #initializeConstants, etc, ..) - even if the class initialize method did not change, a method further down might have and could require re-initialization.

For this reason I sometimes put a timestamp in a comment of the class initialize method to force re-initialization since I known that I added a new constant somewhere (much) further down.


Complex new features might do more harm than good

> On 4 Mar 2019, at 17:13, Ben Coman <btc@openinworld.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mon, 4 Mar 2019 at 20:08, Norbert Hartl <norbert@hartl.name> wrote:
>
>
> > Am 04.03.2019 um 03:46 schrieb Ben Coman <btc@openinworld.com>:
> >
> > In relation to developing sample solutions for an Exercism exercise, the following observation was made about class initialization...
> >
> > > class is initialized on load - and not when you modify it - so this can be very confusing for users��
> >
> > My first thought was to wonder if Quality Assistant could track whether a class initialize method had been run after it was modified,
> > and display alerts.
> >
> > Alternatively, I wonder if a reasonable pattern would be to couple class-side lazy initialization
> > with a pragma to reset a variable when the method is saved...
> >
> >�� �� ��MyClass class >> referenceData
> >�� �� �� �� ��<onSaveResetVariable: ReferenceData>
> >�� �� �� �� ��^ ReferenceData := ReferenceData ifNil: [ 'reference data' ]
> >
>
> Isn���t the usual way to do that to register the class in the shutdown list and implement #shutdown: ?
>
> To me a good minute to work out why I didn't understand you.
> Sorry, I meant <onMethodSaveResetVariable: ReferenceData>
>
> So when 'reference data' is updated and the modified method is saved,
> the variable gets lazy initialized *again* with the new definition.
>
> hope that is more clear,
> cheers -ben