"Do typical packages export symbols?"

I find that as long as I tend to export a lot of symbols from packages that are function based, but usually none from object-oriented modules. In the case of the function based packages, I'm usually importing a bunch of common routines that are used fairly frequently on a project, and the intention is to save having to prefix each call with the package name.

Of course, at that point it can become unclear where certain functions came from, which is not unlike C header files, so I try to keep the names of the functions distinct and explanational in order to avoid collisions and confusion.

I am curious about your suggestion of CVS integration, though. Any hints on how you might get a numeric only "release" number out of it, as the numeric version does not always increment linearly when you use branching. Generally I don't use $VERSION since the module usually upgrades with the rest of the code in parallel.