suggested method for replacing the functionality of status.user?

[Marc Martinez <lastxit@technogeeks.org>]

now that the Dir::State::userstatus mechanism is marked as defunct,
what's the reccomended method for imposing local state directives?
the only thing I ever used it for was to set the 'Important: yes' flag
for things like ssh, postfix, etc so they were configured immediately
after being unpacked, to allow for minimal downtime of the service.
I can think of a few ways to kludge in what I need to happen, but I
thought I'd ask for reccomendations before I got started.

thanks,
Marc