[Pythonmac-SIG] appscript terminology caching #2

[has]

Bob wrote:

>appscript can install the FBA into its package,

Fine with me. I'm not sure how to package it for distribution though 
- AFAIK distutils isn't resource fork/creator code-friendly. Advice?


>start it on on demand and just leave it running.

This would work fine for scripting local apps; not sure about remote 
apps though (remote application scripting depends on the remote 
applications already being running). Is there a way to remotely start 
ATS running on another machine? If not, manually/automatically 
putting it in startup items and never quitting it is probably the 
best solution.


>Perhaps it should have a time to live of a few hours, and the 
>application terminologies probably should expire as well.

Notes: ATS's terminology cache is in-memory, so will always expire 
when ATS is quit.

Question: what would be the benefits of limiting ATS's running time, 
as opposed to just letting it run until system shutdown?

Own thoughts: the longer ATS stays alive, the more benefit is gained 
from caching (good) though there's also more risk of the cache 
growing stale (bad). Regarding automatic expiry of cache: ATS could 
easily flush individual entries in the cache after [e.g.] 48 hours 
even if the application itself stays permanently running.

Then again, periodically flushing the cache is probably a bit 
hit-or-miss affair as far as keeping it in-sync with an application; 
sure as guns users will update their apps precisely 30 minutes after 
ATS last reset its cache and 25 minutes after they last scripted 
those apps.:) Possible memory leaks aside, ATS also shouldn't impact 
much on system memory since each cache entry is just a few KB. What 
other advantages would there be to auto expiry of cache?


Another idea: would checking an application's creation/modification 
date be a viable way to avoid the cache going bad when a newer 
version of the app is installed in exactly the same location?

Thanks,

has
-- 
http://freespace.virgin.net/hamish.sanderson/