+
+*** New "external" package status.
+An external package is any installed package that's not built-in and
+not from `package-user-dir', which usually means it's from an entry in
+`package-directory-list'. They are treated much like built-in
+packages, in that they cannot be deleted through the package menu and
+are not considered for upgrades.
+
+The effect, is that a user can manually place a specific version of a
+package inside `package-directory-list' and the package menu will
+always respect that.
+
+*** If a package is available on multiple archives and one has higher
+priority (as per `package-archive-priorities') only that one is
+listed. This can be configured with `package-menu-hide-low-priority'.
+
+*** `package-menu-hide-obsolete' now toggles the hiding of packages.
+This includes the above-mentioned low-priority packages, as well as
+available packages whose version is lower than the currently installed
+version (which were previously impossible to display).
+This allows users to downgrade a package if a lower version is
+available.
+
+*** When filtering the package menu, keywords starting with "arc:" or
+"status:" represent package archive or status, respectively, instead
+of actual keywords.
+
+*** Most functions which involve downloading information now take an
+ASYNC argument. If it is non-nil, package.el performs the download(s)
+asynchronously.
+
+*** New variable `package-menu-async' controls whether the
+package-menu uses asynchronous downloads.
+