IMO base is a crap module, it tries to handle both loading external files and inline packages, but it tries Too Much Magic™ and in some cases it may fail. It's failed many times for me in the past. I don't trust it any more.

Use it all the time. Never had a problem with it :-)

I don't really think it's that magical. Two rules:

• If the package is already loaded - use it
• Otherwise, try and use it.