My own two cents - the package manager is very important. Maybe the package manager is the milestone that separates Haiku Alpha from Beta. - Andrew
Agreed - even if it isn't the fully-featured PM, there should at least be something akin to what BeOS had. Not having that when going beta/final could lead to a very ugly situation that could never be easily cleaned up.
A simple [un]installer and a PackageBuilder could work just fine until R1.5 or so... just make sure compatibility is maintained.
--The loon