[MonoDevelop] revisiting default assembly references

[John Luke]

Lluis Sanchez wrote:
> El sáb, 14-01-2006 a las 12:07 -0500, John Luke escribió:
>   
>> Hello,
>>     It seems a frequent question is on why we don't reference System or 
>> System.Xml by default.  While I mostly
>> agree that we should explicitly reference assemblies, I think too many 
>> people expect something more than mscorlib
>> to be referenced by default. So I would like to recommend that we allow 
>> for things like System and System.Xml
>> to be referenced by templates with only their partial name, and then a 
>> given template makes the decision on what to reference.
>> The version of the assemblies can just be obtained from the current 
>> instance of the runtime.  Anyone have any comments on this?
>>     
>
> I agree in including references to System and System.Xml in all
> templates. About using the partial name, I also agree, although I think
> we need to redefine the way references work.
>
>   
I didn't mean to imply "just using the partial name" just some system 
sort of like that, to be figured out
by whoever implements it.
> First of all, the "GAC" tab of the references dialog should renamed to
> "Packages" or something like this, since it's not showing assemblies
> from the GAC, but from the packages available through pkg-config (plus
> the system assemblies).
>   
I agree, although I think I would separate the System assemblies from 
those available through pkg-config myself.
> When storing a reference to a package assembly, MD could store the
> assembly name, package name, and package version. When loading a project
> in a system that does not have the available package, MD could use a
> compatible installed version or just show an error if no versions of the
> package are available. We could do the same for references specified in
> templates.
Sounds ok, with one minor issue.  I am not sure if relying on the 
"package" thing won't cause problems for people
trying to share projects between the various IDE's, which is something 
growing increasingly important at least for me.