Desktop user (hopefully) switching from Gentoo

A good day to all,

I'll of course begin with the obligatory but no less sincere "thank you" for 
putting what must be an incredible amount of time & effort into T2. From what 
I've seen so far it seems about as "clean" and up-to-date as any large scale 
build project can ever be (though I'll be the first to admit my bash-grokking 
abilities are sadly sub-par, explaining some questions below :-)

I've been an avid Gentoo user for several years but a combination of slight 
dissatisfaction regarding its current direction and general curiosity keep me 
on the lookout for possible alternatives such as T2. Minimum requirements 
include using the same code base for all my machines (a desktop and two 
sub-notebooks), full customization of each installed system, being able to 
cross-build everything on a single fast [desktop] system, and easy 
upgrading/distribution of binary packages to the notebooks. T2 seems to be able 
to provide all that and more.

However, I still have some questions regarding:

* building SCM packages: the T2 package/ directory has quite a few packages 
that get their sources via CVS/SVN/&c. I was only able to spend a brief time 
checking out T2 (with no access at the moment, sorry), but did notice 
scripts/Download wrapped the final sources in a .tar.bz2 when finished. My 
question: does this .tar.bz2 contain the entire working copy (with SCM 
metadata, e.g. ".svn" directories) or only the sources (e.g. "svn export"> tar> 
bz2)? If the latter, is the orginal working copy saved alongside or will 
incrementing the revision number in the .conf file lead to re-downloading the 
entire package sources instead of just a delta? Traffic doesn't come completely 
for free here, and still I'd like to be able to follow KDE4 trunk without 
having to keep track of installed files manually.

* also regarding SCM packages: can I simply tell T2 to scripts/Download the 
"latest" revision instead of a manually specified rev. # on the [D] line?

* reverse dependencies: the general consensus on enabling/disabling 
functionality in packages (comparable to Gentoo's "use flags", e.g. USB 
support) seems to be including/excluding the library implementing that feature 
(e.g. entering "- libusb" in scripts/Config> Custom package selection). Is this 
correct, and what if USB were to prove necessary after all? Does T2 know which 
packages decided to disable USB support based on the then-absent libusb during 
"configure" and build them again? If not built in, can such functionality be 
scripted using the info provided by the build system?

* deployment & updating: the correct method to build the initial install ISOs 
seems to be Config ; Build-Target ; Create-ISO. After installing, "svn up 
[package/]" will get me the newest build scripts. Is there a command that will 
build & create binary packages for each updated package, or at least a list to 
pass to Emerge-Pkg? Or am I misunderstanding the way updating works once 
"inside" the T2 system?

I hope all these (probably stupid & uninformed :-) end-user questions don't 
constitute spamming this rather-dev list, and I apologize if they do...

Greetings,

   Tobias
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