It appears to me that if you change JavaScript source files for inspector in the inspector/front-end directory, and run build-webkit, at least with the debug configuration, that the resulting changed files aren't copied into the WebKitBuild/Debug/WeCore.framework output directory. I'd look into this a bit further, but I'm a bit stumped as to how the build actually operates. The code to copy these files is in some UUID-ish'y named scripts located in WebKitBuild/WebCore.build/Debug/WebCore.build (for instance). How are these invoked? There are also references to the front-end files in the WebCore.vcproj/WebCore.vcproj file, so maybe this will need to get updated as well? Uggh. Would be nicer to have an "obvious" way to update this stuff, maybe we need to wait for the GYP story.
It's hard to tell whether you're looking at Mac or Windows. You reference WebCore.framework, the Mac built product, but then go on to talk about WebCore.vcproj, the Windows Visual Studio project file. Can you clarify where you're seeing the problem here?
Sorry; I noticed the problem on the Mac, doing a build there with build-webkit having previously done a set-webkit-configuration --debug Investigating the problem, trying to figure out where the copying takes place, led me into the UUID-ishly named scripts (edit from, invoked by XCode?) and the references in the .vcproj file. The immediate problem is that, on the mac, a build-webkit with changed .js files does not copy them into the right place (presumably it doesn't copy them at all).
This works fine if you build from Xcode, because Xcode detects the change and touches the inspector/front-end directory so it will be coppied. But building from the command line does not. Touching inspector/front-end manually will fix it. One fix would be to remove $(SRCROOT)/inspector/front-end from the input files on the build phase script. Then we would run the ditto command every time. Maybe that is fine…