I think if we can get some consensus on the .profile script support (AKA Runtime Hooks), we should move forward with that. Jan has already separated that work into a separate PR, so it could be merged independently.

https://github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/buildpack_app_lifecycle/pull/14

For the staging hooks, we can potentially implement the proposed functionality in pre-staging and post-staging *buildpacks* in conjunction with the multi-buildpacks support Mike mentions above. This is a little more work for the user, but avoids the need to expand the Heroku buildpack contract. I'm not totally convinced that the original proposal actually breaks buildpack compatibility, but moving staging hooks into their own auxiliary buildpacks should remove any remaining points of contention and would not require any merges into buildpack_app_lifecycle.

I think you've convinced me (separate discussion) that things like db initialization are best done in Tasks.

TT