Request: It would be good to be able to specify multiple PKGDIRs, with priority/ordering. This would allow a specific host to, for example, first check its own binaries, then (if none exist), use a binary from another host whose binary tree is NFS-mounted. Hence, if multiple machines with slightly different USE flags are building binaries for themselves individually, they can use binaries from each other without duplicating build work. There are other reasons as well, for instance "prefer my home-made binaries over those on the package CD if they exist, but otherwise still use the package CD binaries"
Putting a hold on feature requests for portage as they are drowning out the bugs. Most of these features should be available in the next major version of portage. But for the time being, they are just drowning out the major bugs and delaying the next version's progress. Any bugs that contain patches and any bugs for etc-update or dispatch-conf can be reopened. Sorry, I'm just not good enough with bugzilla. ;)