Markus Gaelli <gaelli at emergent.de> wrote:
[SNIP]
> > Another BIG advantage of having the dependencies outside the package
> > releases is that if I need to change the dependencies - I *do not* need
> > to publish a new release.
> not of the package, but of the config.

Yes, or at least add an extra config. But this still is much better than
having to do another release - because it will "break" all other configs
referencing the release etc. A kind of cascading problem.

> >> The package should know what it needs.
> >
> > No, :-) I don't agree. A very important aspect is that the packages
> > should NOT know what they need.
> > Because they may be wrong. Or put another way, the author of a package
> > has his/her idea of what the package needs - but I may know of
> > alternatives. There may be several configurations for using say
> > HttpView. I know a few, but you may know of even more.
> Ahm, I agree that the package should not _always_ automatically load
> a prerequisite according to above reasons, but if I could overwrite the
> version of some prereq it needs, why shouldn't it load some default
> prereqs? If the above is the only reason, why a package should not
> know its prereqs _at all_, I disagree.

I simply don't want it encoded inside the package release because it
would still force me to do a new release if I need to change that
information. I think this is just a "tool/UI issue". Associating a
default config to the release will be catered for in the UIs.

> I think there should be both, external configs, which could overwrite 
> some
> internal defaults. What do you think?

What I wrote. :) Again, I think it would be a mistake putting it inside
the release because it will just get more fragile. We have the map that
keeps all these entities at our fingertips - why would we need to put
anything inside the package?

And btw - the most important aspect:

Putting it inside the package only works for the package formats that
"support" that. SM handles packages in a variety of formats. I don't
want to invent different ways of embedding this into these formats.
 
> Markus

regards, Göran