Why does mod_smartsearch not load Mootools in J3.X, even though it needs it?

Question

In the Joomla 3.X series I see there is a move away from Mootools to jQuery, with refactoring still ongoing.

That said, Mootools is still required for the Smart Search module to enable autocomplete (the JS Class implementation of Mootools is used in the inline Javascript of the Smart Search module).

Oddly, Mootools is included on the Smart Search results page, so autocomplete works.

However, Mootools is only included on some pages, and so autocomplete fails with:

Uncaught ReferenceError: Class is not defined

If I add:

JHtml::_('behavior.framework');

to my template it works correctly on all pages. As it stands, the library loads on certain pages and not others, and I can't see a pattern.

Has anyone else experienced this behaviour, or know how to resolve it without template hacks?

This is for J3.2.3.

Answer 1

Simple answer: It's obviously a bug and you are welcome to open an issue at http://issues.joomla.org/ (and http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemBrowse&tracker_id=8103 as long as it's still alive)

If you can provide a PR to fix it, even better.