[TYPO3-shop] tt_products disabling typo3 when table, fh_library not present

[Robert Markula]

Hi Franz,
Some time ago I updated tt_products from an older version (summer 2005) 
to a newer version (february, I think). I foolishly used the extension 
manager to do the update without having a closer look at the manual, so 
I missed the warning to install the 'table' and 'fh_library' extensions 
first.
Bad practice, I know, but this brought down my complete Typo3 frontend 
('TYPO3 Fatal Error: Extension key "table" was NOT loaded! 
(t3lib_extMgm::extPath)'). The next bad move was to delete the cache 
files in typo3conf/ in a desperate brain-dead attempt to restore the FE. 
Which brought down the BE as well. The symptoms are described in a 
posting by Bill Alexy from 30.09.2005. I spent hours to get the BE and 
FE online again.
This was in february.

You might think that I got wiser from this experience, but I did the 
same mistake again: Updated tt_products to version 2.4.8 without 
updating the appropriate 'table' and 'fh_library' extensions first. 
Immediately brought down the FE, but this time I quickly updated these 
extensions and everything worked fine again. Phew :)

I assumed that tt_products would refuse to be installed/updated at all 
without the depending extensions being installed (the EM usually gives 
an error when extension dependencies aren't resolved), but in this case, 
this 'safety net' didn't work (perhaps because tt_products was already 
installed?).
Could such a checking mechanism be implemented for tt_products?

Regards,
Ro