The cool thing about this is that in the process of doing all this research, I figured out a number things I hadn't grokked very well before, and also figured out how to upgrade my repositories to a better backend format, which let me reorganize them in a more convenient layout while I was at it. So that's what I did today.
I guess sometimes virtue really is its own reward. Just like the Avenue Q song: "When you help others, you can't help helping yourself..."