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Originally Posted by Oliner
WOW has the problem that a library loaded with one addon is the one that is globally referenced, and if another addon needs another version, this causes issues. It also causes more disk space to be consumed. The old WOWAce updater even allowed you to "unwind" library dependencies so they were stored at the top level and only one time.
One way that many of the addons have used to stay in sync on libraries is the use of a centralized development site like WOWAce/CurseForge which provides the libraries to the plugin authors plus provides the tools to allow the plugin author to automatically generate a ZIP file containing all the correct libraries along with the current release of code.
You might get better return on time invested by building up tools around the LOTROInterface SVN repository that allows authors to pull current versions of another author's code automatically as they build releases. This alone would eliminate many of the version problems, so long as the author is active. And for inactive plugins, there's really not much to be done unless someone else adopts it and runs with it.
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Since Libraries in LotRO are nothing more than scripts - thus allowing each plugin to use the same class in different paths. So for instance if Plugin1 imports Plugin1/Class1, and Plugin2 imports Plugin2/Class1, both work independently of the other. As far as disk space goes, I'm having trouble seeing a situation where any library is going to use enough space for this to even matter. Even DUInterface, with its 5 different UI elements, and related images doesn't even break 400 KB.
Regarding syncing, that's not the big issue. The issue is once a plugin is stable and mature that author could still be forced to update that plugin - for no other reason than to prevent it from breaking due to a library update. Not because of an API change, not because the library itself allowed the author to improve the plugin, but just so that the plugin continues to function. That just seems to me as a little unfair to be at the mercy of another author -
after the plugin is already mature.