cloning of patches

[drakh]

another nice feature will be when copying patch to have option to set patch as clone/instance or as a copy.
as a clone/instance new patch will reflect changes in its origin like when i add some module in origin it will be automatically added in its instances wit the same wiring, and the posibility in option panel of instances to "break" the connection - some checkbox avialable just when the patch is clone to turn off the cloning feature, after unchecking that checkbox this clone will miss the relation to its origin and will work as a separate unique patch (so it will not reflect the changes in origin anymore)

[senso]

It's a good suggestion, probably a nightmare to implement ...
But I'll think about it.

[woodslanding]

I can only imagine!

One big problem is what happens if you change an in or out, or the order of ins and outs. There are already several small issues around this (like if you copy/paste an inlet, sometimes HH will recable to the new instance--sometimes even recabling an in to an out port.) This is easy enough to fix locally, but if it happens all over your wkp, it would be a big problem. Personally, I have taken to giving unique names to every in and out, and I think you would need to enforce this for cloning to work reliably. (I actually think it should be enforced anyway. Right now it seems like HH isn't sure if it's referencing ports by name or by number. If the names were guaranteed unique HH could ignore port numbers, and the order wouldn't matter. But then there are backwards compatibility issues, so maybe not a good idea.....)

If you change the the inputs to a java class, then you will have to go in and change every other class that calls it to conform to the new signature, because they won't compile now. There are refactoring tools in IDEs to help with this. HH would need some tool to allow you to find and recable all instances of the clone. Otherwise you could break dozens of things with one mouseclick.

Realistically, I think you might just have to disallow any change of ins or outs once a patch has been cloned (require a clone to be made unique if you want to change its interface.) especially if you can use a clone outside its home wkp.

May sound easy, but there are lots of little details for both Senso and user to reckon with!