>> How do people feel about the following change?  The idea is to
 >> enable programs (and humans) dealing with upgrades to know what to
 >> do about a "Removed" package.
> Is it possible to place this kind of information to the inside of
> binary package? How about obtaining all this info like this.

>    ~# pkg_info -Q OVERRIDES /path/to/python-9.9.9.tgz
>    lang/python24 lang/python23 lang/python22 lang/python20
>    ~#

In my view OVERRIDES (renamings or something else, it doesn't matter)
are very close to CONFLICTS, DEPENDS and some other variables.
Its primary source (place where it should be specified) should be
package's Makefile, not CHANGES-YYYYMM.
And it should be a part of package summary information, i.e. be
printed with 'pkg_info -X' and therefore be a part of pkg_summary.gz.
In this case pkgsrc binary distributions will be more consistent.

-- 
Best regards, Aleksey Cheusov.