I just had an idea about fixing conflicts and better documentation of dependencies:
Rather than (or in addition to) documenting dependencies on libraries, we should document dependencies on specific functionalities. That would also give a clue about which parts of a library are being depended on. When a library is changed or updated, people would know exactly where to look for incompatibilities.
What made me think of this is mainly the dependency on pg's Arcn releases, and the way that arcfn.com documented the changes to Arc3. Comparing a list of functionalities changed, to a list of those depended upon, seems to me to be a quick way of pinpointing where compatibility issues can be fixed, or could arise in the future.
NOTE: I don't intend this as a way of keeping libs static. In other words, a few libraries depending on a certain functionality foo shouldn't require or pressure the producer of foo to maintain the same "interface". This is intended more as a way to streamline the conflict-resolution and updating of the code which depends on foo, when it does happen to change.
