are the packaging ISO's to be updated regularly ? or left in original state ?
As with all of our ISOs, updating should be done regularly. A static system would not be a good build system.
thanks Neal.. thought I'd see if I could wrap my useless noggin around packaging

I can't speak for the others nor to Neal but when embarking on the KDE builds, I needed to enable test/testing. I am sure others who were doing KDE stuff also did the same.
Now that this has come to passed, I would like to remind all packagers to once again disable test/testing, and as much as possible, use only packages on the stable sections. The following are not rules that I am making up but rather the implied instructions from our primary packagers in order to make things easier for our lead dev.
If dependencies needed to a specific package is not available on the stable sections, or is either in testing or have not been packaged, it would be proper to (1) temporarily enable test/testing then disable it again and build the package. When sending the package to Dropbox, a note should be attached indicating the use of testing dependencies.
(2) If a dependency has to be packaged because we do not have such on our repository, the packager is responsible for informing our lead dev of the set. If the main package goes to stable and the depends are left on testing, this is going to be problematic.
Unless I am mistaken in my understanding of the above, I'm sure Neal will clarify the points I missed.
Peace and much respect,
Archie