That seems like a good change (but I didn't pore over the diff).

I'd like there to be support for a number of variables/properties of
packages, or rather specifically a variable that indicates a (direct)
dependency has been 'make replace'd (and hence the package is "dirty"
and needs rebuilding).  I think that the the 'foo property is true'
feature should be abstracted.  We shouldn't add these with abandon,
but among the standard CS choices of 0, 1, and many it seems the
answer is many.

So perhaps the use of -A as a flag is not the best choice, compared to
something like -Dautomatic=yes (don't care about the syntax, realize
-D is probably taken, but using the name rather than a magic token, to
stay similar to pkg_info and pkg_admin usage).

-- 
        Greg Troxel <gdt@ir.bbn.com>