My add-on edits Blender's UI scripts.

To apply changes to UI - edited scripts should be reloaded.

For this purpose I use bpy.ops.script.reload()

It does the job, but it works kind of slow.

So I wonder: is there any way to reload one specific UI script ?

I thought importlib could do the thing, but appears it cannot...

An illustration:

As a simple example let's edit the script which is responsible for [File] menu tab.

It's space_topbar.py, which is located in :

Blender\4.1\scripts\startup\bl_ui\space_topbar.py

For demonstration purposes let's get rid of a [Revert] menu option.

This option is being drawn inside the class TOPBAR_MT_file(Menu) *in the line 282:

layout.operator("wm.revert_mainfile")

so let's just comment this line :

# layout.operator("wm.revert_mainfile")

*(After saving "space_topbar.py") I'm trying to reload the changed space_topbar module:

1st try:

import sys,importlib
importlib.reload(sys.modules['bl_ui.space_topbar'])

• no effect:

2nd try: *let's also reload the module's __init__ :

import sys,importlib
importlib.reload(sys.modules['bl_ui.space_topbar'])
importlib.reload(sys.modules['bl_ui'])

• no effect:

3rd try: *screw it – let's reload ALL modules which can be reloaded:

import sys,importlib
for m in list(sys.modules):
    try:
        importlib.reload(sys.modules[m])
    except: pass

• no effect:

Ok, let's use Reload Scripts:

import bpy
bpy.ops.script.reload()

• In this case the work is done:

• But "Reload Scripts" is SLOW.

So I wonder: is were any way to chery-pick the UI script I would like to reload?

I thought Reload Scripts just do bulk importlib.reload, hence I could have use importlib – but as we saw in the examples above – importlib.reload is useless for reloading UI scripts.

➤ Is it possible to reload one specific UI-script without using Reload Scripts ?

?

My add-on edits Blender's UI scripts.

To apply changes to UI - edited scripts should be reloaded.

For this purpose I use bpy.ops.script.reload()

It does the job, but it works kind of slow.

So I wonder: is there any way to reload one specific UI script ?

I thought importlib could do the thing, but appears it cannot...

An illustration:

As a simple example let's edit the script which is responsible for [File] menu tab.

It's space_topbar.py, which is located in :

Blender\4.1\scripts\startup\bl_ui\space_topbar.py

For demonstration purposes let's get rid of a [Revert] menu option.

This option is being drawn inside the class TOPBAR_MT_file(Menu) *in the line 282:

layout.operator("wm.revert_mainfile")

so let's just comment this line :

# layout.operator("wm.revert_mainfile")

*(After saving "space_topbar.py") I'm trying to reload the changed space_topbar module:

1st try:

import sys,importlib
importlib.reload(sys.modules['bl_ui.space_topbar'])

• no effect:

2nd try: *let's also reload the module's __init__ :

import sys,importlib
importlib.reload(sys.modules['bl_ui.space_topbar'])
importlib.reload(sys.modules['bl_ui'])

• no effect:

3rd try: *screw it – let's reload ALL modules which can be reloaded:

import sys,importlib
for m in list(sys.modules):
    try:
        importlib.reload(sys.modules[m])
    except: pass

• no effect:

Ok, let's use Reload Scripts:

import bpy
bpy.ops.script.reload()

• In this case the work is done:

• But "Reload Scripts" is SLOW.

So I wonder: is there any way to cherry-pick the UI script I would like to reload?

I thought Reload Scripts just do bulk importlib.reload, hence I could have use importlib – but as we saw in the examples above – importlib.reload is useless for reloading UI scripts.

➤ Is it possible to reload one specific UI-script without using Reload Scripts ?

?