updating com server

[Alex Martelli]

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote in message
news:9l8dlg$7uq1m$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de...
> I've been working on a com server that returns ~80 fields to Excel.  While
I
> don't understand the why of it, my routine now when making changes to the
> python source is to close Excel; make the python changes; re-register the
> com server, which also serves to confirm that the source properly
compiles;
> and finally, to re-open Excel and the workbook I'm testing with.
>
> HTH you with Word.

This seems about right, because Visual Basic (and VBA's what behind
both Word and Excel) has the endearing habit of caching COM objects
used from it (with out-of-process ones, you can check in NT's task
manager's process list -- the processes stay alive as long as VB's
holding on to them...).  This is no doubt OK for most users, who get
possibly faster performance from this, but a bother for developers
of COM objects who need to try them out from a VB environment!

I wish VB had some call to tell it to drop its COM cache, but I know
of nothing of the kind, so closing and restarting may be the only way.


Alex