Hello all,
You /may/ have noticed some fuzz going on with XFCE lately. Here is a 
quick outline of what Samuli and myself (mainly him though with my 
'consulting' =P ) have been doing.

- pkg renames: We want to match what upstream calls the packages. This 
includes renaming plugins to $foo-plugin instead of just $foo. But not 
ALL plugins, again we are only matching what upstream calls them 
(inclusive of inconsistency by upstream)

- xfce4.eclass vs xfconf.eclass: xfce4.eclass was basically useless due 
to upstream changes and it was confusing to users and devs alike. Since 
this eclass went from useful to people that knew it (before me) to a 
monster that didn't help anyone (now) it was deprecated. No ebuilds use 
it now and none should in the future. Use xfconf.eclass now, it was 
re-written from scratch and went through a few iterations to become the 
main xfce-related eclass. It is very useful for us, now.

- xfce-extras meta package: The meta package has left the tree in favor 
of the renames and ability to allow the user to choose what to install. 
A meta package /might/ come back in the form of a @set, but not soon. 
This decision was heavily based on community feedback: 
http://blog.jolexa.net/2009/08/01/gentoo-how-to-handle-xfce-extras/

- xfce-config.xml: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xfce-config.xml Josh 
(nightmorph) updated this, basically an after thought by us so thanks Josh!

- xfce4-meta : former name xfce-base/xfce4. Renamed to reflect reality. 
This meta package is the *core* of XFCE, it *only* has in it what is 
required to run. Thus, returning XFCE to a minimalistic status in Gentoo 
Linux. This is desired because most XFCE users are looking for a 
lightweight WM, not a heavy DE. So, users will have to add a terminal, 
orage, thunar, etc to the world file instead of relying on a meta package.

- xfce-4.4 was removed. Sorry mips, Samuli gave you time to add your 
approval to 4.6, but it never happened.

- Stabilization requests, just bringing the stable tree more up2date and 
preparing for inclusion into the LiveDVD if desired by the LiveDVD builders.

Hope that helps anyone that was wondering wtf was going on lately =D
-Jeremy