I've been using a setup for running the arc server that allows me to connect to an already running arc service. I have a shell/mzscheme file that launch the arc server, and in a separate thread runs the repl parameterized to read and write on two pipes. Then I have another shell program that just reads from the one pipe, and writes to the other. Finally, I rlwrap that, and I'm connected to the arc repl just as if I had run it normally from the command line.
It's great for making a server that can be launched by cron or initd, and still be able to connect to it. You could alternatively use a socket based system, or disable the close-on-eof, and then you wouldn't have to worry about quitting your server when you disconnect. Though, odds are you aren't going to be worrying about that anyway, as you're only using it for an ide.
thanks. i'm on Windows though and slightly fascist and unreasonable in that i'm not particularly worried about the program working on another platform. i should have mentioned that though. (also i think if anyone needs a noob-oriented IDE, it's going to be Windows users)
The same system should work for windows. Windows does support named pipes, and you don't have to use unix shell code to launch the arc process, since you're writing another program anyway.
Yes, but anyone running Windows is much less likely to use emacs or vim over some gui ide. Linux users are much more likely to be willing to learn those two.
It does most of what you describe (connecting/disconnecting from a running Arc repl). I don't know if you can use it to save cron jobs, but that's not something I typically need to do.
Yes, I use screen very heavily, and I do use it to leave an arc process running, and connect to it again later.
But it can't connect to an arc repl that was executed by a non-interactive shell, such as via cron or initd. That's what I use the pipe system for, and a similar system could easily be used by an ide to communicate with arc and not create a visible shell window.
