Upgrade notion
Config files (RPMv1)
Database
Centralization is evil?
Verifications
Tests
Better build-env-arch(-cross?) support
Portrevision != Package release number, it should or we should invent something to reflect the latter
More metainfo, including sigs
Relocation (alt prefix)
Subpackages

cvs logs of bsd.port.mk, commits per year, starting 21 August 1994

better "already included" detection

Conary - incremental distfiles/package updates <=> portsnap

Ututo - packages optimized for CPU's

Gobolinux - interesting hier, symlinks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoboLinux

Maintainer = name <address> <= recognition

Formatting => fully justified 75-char lines
Spelling => comments and description => linguistics, do we need "a/an" at the beginning

priorities =< 6.7 What is an Essential Required, Important, Standard, Optional, or Extra package?

alternating deps/programs <= virtual packages <= 6.8 What is a Virtual Package? <= /etc/alternatives/ symlinks with priorities

more than deps <= 6.9 What is meant by saying that a package Depends, Recommends, Suggests, Conflicts, Replaces or Provides another package? <= when deinstalling a pkg, check files with failed checksums against checksums in other installed packages and don't touch them if they match

strict policy on updating running programs, just stopping them is unacceptable

maybe make some per-port super portrevisions, which never decrease, but increase with each change - and judge what's newer by this. It would solve a bunch of problems, as well as rid us of traditional portrevisions and portepochs.

maybe some port id, which survives repomoves would also help immensely.

keep distfiles separated into categories/ports for better scalability.

uniform <= 3.9.1 Prompting in maintainer scripts

mandatory copyright notices, be it "GPL" or a multipage license

set -e at the start of most commands in makefiles

#!/usr/bin/make -f

multiple maintainers <= uploaders in deb

scripts idempotency

portname = librarynamesoversion - encourages lazy so bumps, but allows for greater flexibility

WNPP resource - http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
Maintainers' resources - https://nm.debian.org/

Encourage better familiarity with BSD and non-BSD, FOSS and non-FOSS projects. Maybe have some virtual or real boxes available to committers.

Standardized building envs => distributed manual pkg builds (debian) => distributed auto pkg builds (@home)

Package sizes (installed/packaged)