Re: Changes I've been thinking of...

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 8 Oct 2009, at 17:29, Matt Rice wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 5:30 AM, Richard Frith-Macdonald
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> > OK ... we just have different perceptions here then.  In those  
> > circumstances
> > I expect a package to be *available* to all users, but NOT to be
> > automatically forced on them.
> > Certainly *I* don't want to have something like that imposed on  
> > *ME* just
> > because someone else installs a package globally.
>
> there is no enforcing here,
>
> people could easily set
>
> defaults write NSGlobalDomain GSAppKitUserBundles '()'
>
> to get no theme bundles, I do this e.g. for using themes in every
> application except Gorm
> It just pushes the burden of setting defaults onto those that don't
> want to follow the global installation
> instead of those that do, I am completely fine with installing
> defaults system wide
> (as long as the system domain doesn't override the global domain)

Perhaps 'forced' was too strong a word, but the basic issue for me is  
that I don't want other people changing the way my applications behave.

Having them make a behavior change which I couldn't set back would be  
intolerable.  Having them make a change which I then need to figure  
out how to revert, is annoying/undesirable.  The second case is what  
we are talking about here.

If behavior of the system just suddenly changes because a package  
someone installed has changed a global default, It's going to take me  
time and effort to figure out what happened and how to reverse it

So, IMO global defaults should be used very sparingly, and should be  
used by the managers of distributions, not by people making individual  
app/library/bundle packages (except where the defaults only effect  
those specific packages of course).  The very last thing you want is  
for every theme developer to set a global default to make their theme  
the one everyone uses... that decision should belong to the person who  
supplies the distribution, not the individual theme packages.