I am adding a feature (displaying numbers of unread messages per forum to user) to the forums package which we want to commmit to CVS Head. It should be possible to activate the feature with a site-wide parameter, i.e. all packages should have the same value for the parameter. This is because otherwise it would be possible to have a reasonable behaviour for the forums-portlet when it aggregates information about different packages, and probably it makes more sense to switch this feature on and off for the whole system.
If I understand it right, the package paramters are stored per instance. Is it possible to set a paramter for all instances of a package somehow?

Thank you that's what I feared with respect to the package parameters. I thought maybe there might be an alternative approach without extending oacs core.

This TIP has already been approved but not implemented.

I think it would be great if this could get into the next openacs release.

I think the design in this TIP covers your needs and most other uses of parameters.

http://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=271910

Forgot to say: There is no upgrade script so far, can write one, if this is accepted for commital to CVS head.

Another point: I submitted a second version of the patch, since in the first one I missed retrieving the value.
Even now, I did not yet find a way how to change the parameter::get function, since it does some fairly complex stuff already. For the moment, I only changed parameter::get_from_package_key.