On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 6:50 PM, Ramon Leon <ramon.leon@allresnet.com> wrote:
My objection, the big ball of mud called Kernel-Extensions and the liberal use of overrides, which I think are evil.
I don't know about Kernel-Extensions but if I look at http://installer.pbwiki.com/311-KernelExtensions, I can see that «It should be safe to install on any 3.7 or later image, as it only adds methods.» If this sentence is wrong, you should contact Keith.
I like using packages that do their best to only use extensions and don't just go around the system willy nilly monkey patching everything. I don't trust packages with overrides not to break my system and I absolutely don't like packages that once installed can't be uninstalled, try removing Kernel-Extensions sometime.
If you only install Kernel-Extensions, it should be safe and easy to uninstall. Now, if you install packages that depend on Kernel-Extensions, it is understandable that Kernel-Extensions becomes harder to remove :-). This is even more true, if MC1.5 depends on Kernel-Extensions (but I don't know).
Now, the code may work perfectly fine, and Keith's done a lot of work, but it's just not community friendly code. A package should have a clear responsibility, few dependencies, not too many extensions, no overrides if at all possible, and must install and uninstall cleanly without hosing my system. If it doesn't meet those criteria, I don't consider it safe to even experiment with.
-- Damien Cassou Peter von der Ahé: «I'm beginning to see why Gilad wished us good luck». (http://blogs.sun.com/ahe/entry/override_snafu)