I also agree. Security issues aside, An (auto) downloader would be a *nice to have* and not a *requirement*. I see an option like that *only* after the requisite base of external builds, repositories, external listing info/site are in place. After that we could maybe think about a package management deal, but that’s *non trivial* to say the least. Sure it works in large projects like Debian but only after years of work an maintenance by a large number of people.

People have managed to download and install Max externals for years now. The best/easiest solution is a default folder search path like Pd-extended’s "pd-externals” folder in the user home directory. Then you just tell people to drop the externals in there and have an optional setting to automatically add all subfolders to the search path. This is what I do in PdParty so it’s pretty easy to add stuff. It could work imilar to how libdir does in extended. Power users could turn off the auto search path adding and stick with loading by name, etc. 

--------
Dan Wilcox
@danomatika
danomatika.com
robotcowboy.com

On Dec 18, 2014, at 3:37 PM, pd-list-request@lists.iem.at wrote:

From: Fred Jan Kraan <fjkraan@xs4all.nl>
Date: December 18, 2014 at 3:02:36 PM EST
Subject: Re: [PD] [Bulk] Extending Vanilla (was Cyclone help patches & issue list)


On 2014-12-18 20:34, IOhannes m zmölnig wrote:
On 12/18/2014 08:16 PM, Samuel Burt wrote:
1. Opening a patch with [import cyclone] would automatically download the

i *strongly* oppose to anything that automatically connects to the
internet and fetches or submits data.

And the Pd-community currently does not have the resources to build
something that is similar or more advanced than the Debian distribution
system and preferably be cross platform.

mgfdsr
IOhannes

Greetings,

Fred Jan