It seems to me that the main issue you have come up against is that it is
sometimes not trivial to resolve the relationship between the source scripts
used for development and the distributed scripts.
As I see it there are (at least) a couple of ways of handling this.
A) Leave things as they are but better document how these more complex
projects are built
B) Do as you suggest and ship the source scripts with added infrastructure
to build/load the component scripts on the fly
C) Decreasing the complexity of the projects by making the component
source scripts longer, but using sections and code-folding to retain the
navigability of the project:
http://www.jsoftware.com/pipermail/beta/2010-June/004050.html
With regards to comments/documentation I fully agree that it should not be
stripped out of library scripts. As Devon suggests, this is optional in Project
Manager (both 6.02 & 7.01) and could be easily changed.
On a related matter, in the current J701 beta a number of often-used scripts
(e.g. files, strings, dll ...) are now loaded by default (as part of stdlib.ijs
script) when booting J. Basically the old scripts are now source scripts for
the project that generates the stdlib.ijs script. As such the comments are
stripped and the individual scripts are no longer shipped to users as part of
the base library. I like the fact that these scripts are now loaded at boot by
default, but would prefer that the individual scripts be retained and loaded or
required by stdlib.ijs rather than catenated as one big stdlib.ijs script.
> From: Andrew Nikitin
> Sent: Sunday, 18 July 2010 11:35
>
> What is the big benefit of distributing parts of standard library in
> mutilated form -- with comments stripped off and files merged together
> into one?
>
> Maybe in the early nineties it made sense from resource saving
> standpoint, nowadays, I believe, it is more harm than good.
>
> My major complain is about plot -- because this is the part I want to
> modify most often. But other library files bear "NB. built from
> project: ~Source/classes/..." mark too.
>
> My suggestion is to to include those parts of library, that are
> currently in the "compressed" form, in their natural form. I understand
> that this may reqiure effort. For example, I downloaded plot source,
> but I failed to install it in a way that it would run from its source
> form, the PM's "compile" process is currently somehow needed for it to
> run. But I believe that it is a right thing to do and will simplify
> things in the long run.
>
>
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