[Sage] Getting started with Sage development

[Thomas Themel]

Hi,
Graham King (graham at darkcoding.net) wrote on 2006-03-18:
>  - Is there a way I can run an unpackaged version, so as not to 
> build/bounce/install each time ? If so when I change a .js, how can I 
> get Firefox to reload this ?

The way I handled this when tinkering with Sage some time ago was to
simply unpack the installed sage.jar in my Mozilla profile into a
subdirectory called 'sage'. Then, I adapted the chrome.manifest file to
point to that directory instead of the jar file (replace all jar:
references with relative URLs, like changing

content sage    jar:chrome/sage.jar!/content/

to

content sage    chrome/sage/content/


>  - When sage does:
> 
> var Logger = new 
> Components.Constructor("@sage.mozdev.org/sage/logger;1", "sageILogger", 
> "init");
> logger = new Logger();
> logger.info("test");
> 
>  Where does the 'test' string end up ?

In the JavaScript Console's "Messages" list.

>  - I don't really understand how the .idl files fit in. I think they 
> are  XPCOM interfaces for Javascript to talk to Firefox (the C++ parts), 
> but how can you tell what code is executed when a method on the 
> interface is invoked ?

Hrm, these IDL files are a rather recent development (not in any
released version, AFAIK). I haven't quite figured out what they're good
for, but I suspect that you've got it backwards - the implementation of
these components is in the JavaScript files in the same directory. I
suspect the IDL files are simply there to make the code cleaner, but
perhaps someone else can explain really that.

ciao,
-- 
[*Thomas  Themel*] I asked a friend what he thought Google would market to someone
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