It's Alive

["Eric S. Crawley" <ESC@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.SYMBOLICS.COM>]

    Date: Thu, 21 Sep 89 12:16:28 CDT
    From: "RDP%ALAN.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM"%ALAN.kahuna.DECNET.LOCKHEED.COM@Warbucks.AI.SRI.COM

	This is by design.  Changes to the namespace are not broadcast; at a large
	site like Symbolics or MIT, the constant barrage of changes would swamp the
	network.  To keep network traffic to a minimum, the namespace server only
	sends information in response to a query by another machine.  :Reset Network
	forces a namespace update by calling NETI:INITIALIZE-NAMESPACES-AND-NETWORK,
	which asks the server for a quick update.  This function is supposed to be
	called at cold and warm boot as well.

    What about adding an entry to a feature request list at Symbolics?  The
    desired feature is the capability of allowing users to turn on namespace
    auto-updating (at small sites,naturally).  Any chance that this
    would be doable?

I doubt that Symbolics will ever support the broadcasting of namespace
changes.  However, I believe the functionality you are looking for is already
in the system.  If you set NETI:*VALIDATE-ONCE-PER-BOOT* to nil in your
worlds, user machines will check with the namespace server for any changes to
the namespace whenever the namespace is touched and it has been more than 30
minutes since the last time you checked the namespace.  [There are actually
cases when you would check more often but they aren't worth going into now.]