I don't know what the requirements are, but here are some random thoughts...

Would it make more sense to have a babysitter app running that launches the working app, checks for updates, signals the old app to stop accepting new work (and terminate, if that's appropriate), and launches a new updated app?

Given your suggested approach, what are the implications if there's a bug in the update?

Can the new functionality be returned as a data structure? If the file is updated, run it to get the new data structure. Run some tests against it, then replace the old data structure with the new. On the other hand, if the tests fail, keep the old data structure. (Replacing symbol table entries in a module is easy -- replacing other stuff is problematic.)

-QM
--
Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of

In reply to Re: Sanely modifying running code by QM
in thread Sanely modifying running code by Limbic~Region

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.