Yup, that sounds normal. I don't remember what magic the OpenACS APM
file watching stuff uses exactly, but it never did work for new
non-connection threads you explicitly spawn. It may not even work for
the AOLserver scheduler thread, I don't remember.
Clearly the master thread that gets created at AOLserver startup is
not modified by the APM stuff, and whatever hooks the APM has inserted
to re-source the modified file into each new connection thread as it
starts up are not taking effect for new non-connection threads.
That's how I remember it happening back when I last looked into it
anyway, way back in ACS 4.2 days I think...