Just because you have a feature, doesn't mean you have to use the feature. When I did it, I just started a fresh image and loaded all my new code (checked out from the repository) into it.
Or sometimes I probably just used the existing image. I don't remember. Unless your code depends on something being not defined, or you deleted a lot of old code, it wouldn't really make any difference.
If I ever had a lot of code, I could have built the image offline (though Lisp compilers are pretty fast). If I had a lot of code to build and database migrations to handle on a live database, it could have gotten hairy. I guess that's just the price I would have had to pay for the added flexibility of being able to build my image offline. IME, complex database migrations in production can get hairy on any language/platform.
It's not really that much different from Python or Ruby, is it? They have a "repl" and an "image", except they're much weaker and not formally defined, or portable, or able to be saved or loaded, or anything like that. But if Python 4 was released today and Guido said "there's now functions to load and save images!", it's not like every Python deployment in the world would stop working. Everyone would have a new mechanism they could use, or not, as they liked, but it wouldn't affect their existing procedures.
Or sometimes I probably just used the existing image. I don't remember. Unless your code depends on something being not defined, or you deleted a lot of old code, it wouldn't really make any difference.
If I ever had a lot of code, I could have built the image offline (though Lisp compilers are pretty fast). If I had a lot of code to build and database migrations to handle on a live database, it could have gotten hairy. I guess that's just the price I would have had to pay for the added flexibility of being able to build my image offline. IME, complex database migrations in production can get hairy on any language/platform.
It's not really that much different from Python or Ruby, is it? They have a "repl" and an "image", except they're much weaker and not formally defined, or portable, or able to be saved or loaded, or anything like that. But if Python 4 was released today and Guido said "there's now functions to load and save images!", it's not like every Python deployment in the world would stop working. Everyone would have a new mechanism they could use, or not, as they liked, but it wouldn't affect their existing procedures.