These are the TODO items for the Haiku Package Management.

packagefs

• Implement caching for uncompressed package file heap chunks.
• If necessary, add a caching mechanism to speed up mounting it.

Package Daemon

• Add user notification/interaction support for initial verification (on start-up) and manual package de-/installation.
• Support packages being copied to the packages directory. Currently only moving works.

Build system

• Add hybrid support.

Package building

• Define packaging guidelines and create a tool to check packages against those.
• Adjust build "recipes" for HaikuPorts packages as needed and build the packages.
  • Status: There's a package management ​branch of haikuports with recipes for most packages already updated for building HPKGs. Here's an overview.

Package kit/manager

• Add distribution update support.
• Implement a GUI package manager.

Boot loader

• Safe mode/recovery options:
  • Disable home and common.
  • Boot into old system state.

Package/package repository format

• Add a package attribute (string) that specifies a base package of a package. For most ported software, the files resulting from a built are usually separated into different packages (base, develop, debug-info, doc, etc.). All of these packages should be installed in the same installation location, since they have been built with the same installation prefix. In order to enforce such a constraint, one of the packages should be declared in the "requires" list of the others and they should additionally use the new attribute to identify it as the base package.
• Add support for repository keys (public/private) and package signing/check sums, so that it is possible to verify that data retrieved from a repository have not been tempered with.

Miscellaneous

• Modify Expander to use a directory instead of the expander.rules file. This way a package (like xz-utils or p7zip) can contribute a single file with the rules for its tools. Ticket: #8494
• Add MIME directory watching to registrar, so it can update the MIME DB caches when packages are de-/activated.
• Get rid of post_install scripts. Do that in the build system.
• Get rid of UserBootscript. Start the scripts in "~/config/settings/boot/launch" from Bootscript instead.
• Update Installer.