From: jmckitrick
Subject: How to 'purge' a system w/o reloading?
Date: 
Message-ID: <1156951475.405987.148900@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>
If you have a running image, how can you return it to a 'clean' state
w/o reloading from scratch?

Supposed a load had breakage, you fix it, and want to re-load w/o
fixing conflicts, etc.

From: Pascal Bourguignon
Subject: Re: How to 'purge' a system w/o reloading?
Date: 
Message-ID: <87fyfeqil3.fsf@informatimago.com>
"jmckitrick" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:

> If you have a running image, how can you return it to a 'clean' state
> w/o reloading from scratch?
>
> Supposed a load had breakage, you fix it, and want to re-load w/o
> fixing conflicts, etc.

Basically you cannot, as long as you're using a Von Neuman or Turing
Machine computer.

If  you were  using  a  functionnal machine  (lambda  calculus), or  a
reversible computer, you could go back in the past.

You could implement a reversible machine in Common Lisp (using a lot
of memory).  But given your available hardware, it's probably the
simpliest to just reload a snapshoot.

That said, perhaps you don't want to return to a clean state (as
others will say you, I can help you if you really need it ;-)).
Perhaps you'll just be happy with DELETE-PACKAGE.

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__
From: jmckitrick
Subject: Re: How to 'purge' a system w/o reloading?
Date: 
Message-ID: <1156977439.638127.82260@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
> Perhaps you'll just be happy with DELETE-PACKAGE.

I'll give that a shot.
From: Rob Thorpe
Subject: Re: How to 'purge' a system w/o reloading?
Date: 
Message-ID: <1157019189.902273.232850@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>
jmckitrick wrote:
> If you have a running image, how can you return it to a 'clean' state
> w/o reloading from scratch?

Lisps don't really do this.  (Except with delete-package Pascal
mentions).
It would make optimized implementations difficult.