The whole idea behind var files is that you're not supposed to import them. That way, if you ever share a scene or look, you can reference the var, rather than packing up all that content and distributing it again. the "every asset used in a scene must be distributed in the scenes" thing is what made the vac file system so bloated.
...That I understand. The location of these resources is, in reality, irrelevant. VAR makes the repository modular using something like symbolic links. My argument isn't "importing" in the traditional sense. It is how the VAR files are assimilated into the game repository, so to speak. I have found some creators encourage the creation of sub folders in the AddonPackages folder. This resulted in duplication errors when unwittingly dropping a VAR package that already exists in the main folder. The other thing I have been noticing is that some creators are manually editing the 'meta.json' files and/or editing the var package file name "post creation" by VaM VAR wizard, which results in "invalid VAR package" error messages being thrown as a result. I know, because I had to manually correct a few when I noticed the typos, which are not always easy to spot, BTW... This is what I mean by it is still (in it's current state) too open-ended, lending itself to failures like this.
If someone simply changes the VAR package name, that is enough to prevent the package from loading. This is a headache for most people who don't have a lot of time to debug things like this and, more importantly, no experience with programming! I think VAR packages are a brilliant system, but there are still some leaks that need to be plugged for it to be a more robust solution. 90% of the time I'm doing some kind of file maintenance instead of enjoying the scenes. If one character is off in the file name or meta file, the package doesn't load... This is what begs for a tighter export/ import process. And again, by import, I don't mean into the 'custom' folder. And you may be tempted to say that it shouldn't happen that frequently to warrant such an elaborate soltution. Believe me, it does!! I'm embarssed to say how much time I spent working this out!
A wizard would, for example, warn of duplications at the time of import, and not a few days later when you have imported other packages that are also duplicates, creating a lot of clean-up later on! A wizard would also warn of inconsistent data that would cause conflicts or broken links, again, at the time of import and not a few days later, allowing the pile of errors to accumulate over time. We need a wizard to warn us immediately if there are issues. Simply dropping a file in a folder does not provide us this "intelisense" type function. Call it smart importing if you will! This also provides an opportunity to reachout the content creators immediately to fix the errors (if they cannot be fixed by the user), reducing the number of effected people by isolating the problem quickly.
There also needs to be some sort of file maintenance utlity to help clean-up issues with the old filing system such as duplication and broken links. An additional function that would be a "godsend" would be to convert (and delete) legacy VaM files to the newer .vap format. I'm still learning how to program. I would like to take a crack at it. But if someone with more experience is willing to tackle this problem, it would certainly spare many users from headaches!
