the removal of the $icmsModule variable was part of the cleanups that were marked as 'to remove in 1.4' I remember. The fix for the modules should be to use icms::$module if I'm not mistaken.

The global variable that was coming up empty was $impresscms (and sometime $icmsModule). I'm not sure where the disconnect occurred. It may have been assigned an old variable somewhere. Better to figure it out now.

It is true that I did some major cleaning up of supposedly no-longer used attributes and functions in the core. Normally tests should have shown regressions, but no manual test is faultless I'm afraid.

The missing global is strange, I didn't change anything concerning that, as far as I know the content module did work during my latest tests.

Found the sorting issue - a global was no longer available and needed to be replaced with icms:: static object. Discovered it as I was testing with the Content module - the admin page for it would not load after installing.

Some additional findings that are not add-in library specific: sorting tables by clicking on the header link in a column is not working for custom tags, ratings, symlinks (pages), block positions, blocks, mimetypes, autotasks, and userranks. I verified these are working in 1.4.4. Trying to track it down now. I'm suspecting something with the IPF table class or filtering in the admin panel. What's missing in all of the links is "fct=" and the object name.