Re: Access2Base - New release

On 19/05/14 15:59, Lionel Elie Mamane wrote:
> On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 11:06:46AM +0100, Noel Power wrote:
> > On 19/05/14 08:23, Stephan Bergmann wrote:
> > > On 05/16/2014 06:39 PM, Lionel Elie Mamane wrote:
>
> > [...]
>
> > > > So, the question is "why does this code enforce this condition,
> > > > and can we change it"? Can we just remove the condition
> > > > altogether, or should we add this case:
>
> > > >                  || sOriginalUrl.match("$(INST)")
>
> > > > Noel? Uray? You are our Basic "FindTheExpert"s. What's your
> > > > opinion on this?
>
> > It seems to me that the code there (which I admit I am not familiar
> > with) is all to do with extensions and management of extensions
> > right? In this case you are talking about trying to override a
> > built-in library with an extension,
>
> Yes.
>
> > the code it would seem rightly tries to prevent an extension from
> > doing that. I mean there are wizards, conversions, routines
> > etc. that are considered part of the system that shouldn't be
> > 'replaced' under the hood.
>
> Naively, why not? If an extension wants to improve one of our wizards
> or conversion, why forbid it?

this has the potential to create hard-to-debug failures.

> > Access2Base is considered a part of the core isn't it? it isn't
> > shipped as an extention, it is shipped as part of the product, (...)
> > Access2Base is either part of the product or it's not.
>
> I don't think this was a very conscious decision. Access2Base started
> its life as an extension that got integrated into LibreOffice, but is
> still available as an extension for other branches / forks of the
> code. It got shipped as part of the product since that was easier to
> set up and LibreOffice was (my perception) moving away from bundled
> extensions anyway.
>
> > it seems ato me that you are trying to get around the rules of no-new
> > features etc. by exploiting the extension mechanism.
>
> No, extensions are *very* *much* *designed* to allow addition of new
> features to LibreOffice!

"addition", but not "replacement", especially not "potentially partial
replacement".  with a "bundled extension" it would work to replace it,
because there LO knows the "boundaries" of what is being replaced and
can disable the whole bundled extension; but when replacing something
that's built-in you can't assume that it was ever designed to be
replaced, you can end up with a mixture of built-in files and extension
files loaded that doesn't work.

if you want to bundle something that can be replaced by the user, do it
as a bundled extension.