SLIM - STEEL Library Manager

One of the more stable aspects of STEEL is its library manager (slim).

Slim is rather powerfull in its ability to allow the users of external modules, the ability to edit many of the aspects of the code it links too at run-time.

This means that you do not need to re-apply the changes you bring to the module's API, because they are actually translated for you when you import the original library. This has the advantage that whenever the author of the module updates his tool, as long as the api is the same, you can simply use it even if you renamed some of its internal functions.

So what does slim do exactly?

• Install and manage your external code anywhere on your disk or network, including more than one actual location, and use any of those tools without having to use an actual path when linking to it. Slim finds the most approriate file for you.
• Link to code at run time like AND use slim-link module to link your external slim files to the main application. If you want to distribute a linked version. This is a one word invocation which needs no make file. IT CANNOT BE EASIER.
• Solves the namespace issues.
• Lets you CHANGE THE EXTERNAL TOOL'S API without actually changing the original file... so you can reuse successive versions of that tool with the changes you need WITHOUT EDITING ONE LINE OF CODE!
• Defines a specification which allows more than one user to share the same code delivery method, which means people using slim all use other tools without fussing about HOW to integrate it in their own apps...
• Allows you to distribute datafiles along with your modules and not need to worry about installation directory, as slim has a mechanism to allow you to load files within your module relative to itself, wherever it is.
• Add module context-specific switchable debugging and nested console printing.
• Once you slim some code, you are guaranteed that it will be usable by ANYONE, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME... PERIOD ...
• No gimicks no gotchas, this is the real deal.

Go ahead, slim your code!

SLiM is really easy to integrate into your pipeline. Really, if you already use objects to encapsulate your reusable code, then its really easy to convert it to a slim module. Usually, after reading about 15 minutes, you can convert any code into a slim module... this can take as little as 5 minutes depending on how your current code is built, and will take at the very most 30, if you aren't to used to rebol.

Once you slim your code, you can then either use the code dynamically, and release your code with appropriate libs externally, or you can link them right in your main app and remove dependencies, using the slim-linker module.

last updated: 13-Jul-2004/23:23:07-4:00