OK, FreePBX prepares the file in /etc/asterisk and a “reload” will “commit” them by both reloading the files and in the background updating the “asterisk database” which is currently an sqlite3 database
https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/SQLite3+astdb+back-end
But Asterisk per se doesn’t give a damn about FreePBX’ machinations, but RG’s et al etc are read from the current Sqlite3 database.
To shortcircuit the reload then either update the SQlite3 database in realtime, the result will be immediate, and then if necessary commit back to FreePBX when convenient.
(rasterisk -x ‘database show’)