We have used Continous Integration to help with this.  Our Jenkins build will pull the source, compile it, zip it, and attach back to the Jenkins job.  On success, a secondary job sends this zip to the server, unpacks it, and updates the symlink for the web folder to the new one.  This way we only move source files, and we are not having to worry about build processes on a production environment

Yes, if you set up a response and request programatically as Oliver Thompson said, then you can just call the ClassMethods rather than going through HTTP to Rest.   

The original article is here:  https://community.intersystems.com/post/creating-iris-cross-functional-app  The recorded demo is slightly different for a few reasons, and <spoilers> the final demo does not work, but only because of time constraints and a slight typo in code.  See if you can spot it!