NAME

       Class::Refresh - refresh your classes during runtime

VERSION

       version 0.05

SYNOPSIS

         use Class::Refresh;
         use Foo;

         Class::Refresh->refresh;

         # edit Foo.pm

         Class::Refresh->refresh; # changes in Foo.pm are applied

DESCRIPTION

       During development, it is fairly common to cycle between writing code and testing that code. Generally
       the testing happens within the test suite, but frequently it is more convenient to test things by hand
       when tracking down a bug, or when doing some exploratory coding. In many situations, however, this
       becomes inconvenient - for instance, in a REPL, or in a stateful web application, restarting from the
       beginning after every code change can get pretty tedious. This module allows you to reload your
       application classes on the fly, so that the code/test cycle becomes a lot easier.

       This module takes a hash of import arguments, which can include:

       track_require
             use Class::Refresh track_require => 1;

           If set, a "require()" hook will be installed to track modules which are loaded. This will make the
           list of modules to reload when "refresh" is called more accurate, but may cause issues with other
           modules which hook into "require" (since the hook is global).

       This module has several limitations, due to reloading modules in this way being an inherently fragile
       operation. Therefore, this module is recommended for use only in development environments - it should not
       be used for reloading things in production.

       It makes several assumptions about how code is structured that simplify the logic involved quite a bit,
       and make it more reliable when those assumptions hold, but do make it inappropriate for use in certain
       cases. For instance, this module is named "Class::Refresh" for a reason: it is only intended for
       refreshing classes, where each file contains a single namespace, and each namespace corresponds to a
       single file, and all function calls happen through method dispatch. Unlike Module::Refresh, which makes
       an effort to track the files where subs were defined, this module assumes that refreshing a class means
       wiping out everything in the class's namespace, and reloading the file corresponding to that class. If
       your code includes multiple files that all load things into a common namespace, or defines multiple
       classes in a single file, this will likely not work.

METHODS

   refresh
       The main entry point to the module. The first call to "refresh" populates a cache of modification times
       for currently loaded modules, and subsequent calls will refresh any classes which have changed since the
       previous call.

   modified_modules
       Returns a list of modules which have changed since the last call to "refresh".

   refresh_module $mod
       This method calls "unload_module" and "load_module" on $mod, as well as on any classes that depend on
       $mod (for instance, subclasses if $mod is a class, or classes that consume $mod if $mod is a role). This
       ensures that all of your classes are consistent, even when dealing with things like immutable Moose
       classes.

   unload_module $mod
       Unloads $mod, using Class::Unload.

   load_module $mod
       Loads $mod, using Class::Load.

CAVEATS

       Refreshing modules may miss modules which have been externally loaded since the last call to refresh
           This is because it's not easily possible to tell if a module has been modified since it was loaded,
           if we haven't seen it so far. A workaround for this may be to set the "track_require" option in the
           import arguments (see above), although this comes with its own set of caveats (since it is global
           behavior).

       Global variable accesses and function calls may not work as expected
           Perl resolves accesses to global variables and functions in other packages at compile time, so if the
           package is later reloaded, changes to those will not be noticed. As mentioned above, this module is
           intended for refreshing classes.

       File modification times have a granularity of one second
           If you modify a file and then immediately call "refresh" and then immediately modify it again, the
           modification may not be seen on the next call to "refresh". Note however that file size and inode
           number are also compared, so it still may be seen, depending on if either of those two things
           changed.

       Tracking modules which "use" a given module isn't possible
           For instance, modifying a Moose::Exporter module which is used in a class won't cause the class to be
           refreshed, even if the change to the exporter would cause a change in the class's metaclass.

       Classes which build themselves differently based on the state of other classes may not work properly
           This module attempts to handle several cases of this sort for Moose classes (modifying a class will
           refresh all of its subclasses, modifying a role will refresh all classes and roles which consume that
           role, modifying a metaclass will refresh all classes whose metaclass is an instance of that
           metaclass), but it's not a problem that's solvable in the general case.

BUGS

       Reloading classes when their metaclass is modified doesn't quite work yet
           This will require modifications to Moose to support properly.

       Tracking changes to metaclasses other than the class metaclass isn't implemented yet
       Metacircularity probably has issues
           Refreshing a class which is its own metaclass will likely break.

       Please report any bugs through RT: email "bug-class-refresh at rt.cpan.org", or browse to
       <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Class-Refresh>.

SEE ALSO

       Module::Refresh

SUPPORT

       You can find this documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

           perldoc Class::Refresh

       You can also look for information at:

       •   MetaCPAN

           <https://metacpan.org/release/Class-Refresh>

       •   RT: CPAN's request tracker

           <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Class-Refresh>

       •   Github

           <https://github.com/doy/class-refresh>

       •   CPAN Ratings

           <http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/Class-Refresh>

CREDITS

       This module was based in large part on Module::Refresh by Jesse Vincent.

AUTHOR

       Jesse Luehrs <doy at tozt dot net>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       This software is copyright (c) 2013 by Jesse Luehrs.

       This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5
       programming language system itself.