Well, the <tt>package.list.txt</tt> is the <i>only</i> way to get the correct mapping between package directory root name and <i>documented</i> package name. I've not found anything in any of the packages that gives this information; it's not in the configure.in or the README or the documentation files.<p>As far as curation overhead goes, it's tiny. Certainly smaller than the effort of actually finding which version of the packages to distribute.