Also, when we finally get around to writing that pre-commit hook script for the repository, it should check for the use of file delete or system "rm -rf" and prevent such commits and recommend the "delete" alternative.

If svn supports multiple {pre,post}-commit scripts then I'd like to keep each one to specific tasks, one for svn ps and others for their own specific stuff, not one giant "I can handle it all" script. I wrote some days ago asking if any one would volunteer to start putting something together but no one wrote back :-(

However, checking for "things we shouldn't be using in Portfiles" seems like a bit of a longshot to me, we handle a good number of special case ports that do things we can't reject, however much we may dislike them. Instead, Portfile writing "good practices" should be documented and advocated where ever we can, I'm at the moment trying to document 'delete' in portfile(7).