Hi Thomas,
We are actually working to implement improvements in this area. I cannot share the details yet, but I want you to know that we do understand what you are struggling with, and we will try to make things simpler in the future. No specifics at this stage though.
As for the new features announcements, we are not publishing complete lists of upcoming features. What we are doing is making pre-release announcements about scheduled demos of new major features, doing blog posts about cool new stuff near the release date. So, keep an eye on our web site and community resources to be in the loop!
And now the answer to this question:
>>> It would be VERY helpful if a project could #use a name mapping file from other projects.