it would be a great help for the release process, if the package manager could be extended such that it shows prominently the maturity level, allows to show the differences of the locally used packages to the approriate version in cvs, and supports directly a commit for authorized developers after running the regression tests (the tests of the package to be committed and maybe as well the tests of the packages, that depend on that package).
Only packages that pass the tests should go into the release or beta versions, others should go into something like the HEAD version.
The package manager could as well use categories to flag where the packages "belong to" (core, dotlrn, commerce suite, project, ...). This would be an alternative to the discussion, whether the packages directory should be restructured (see 5.3 roadmap discussion). This would help especially beginners to see what's there and what is ready to use for what purpose
