I just wanted to make a suggestion, maybe the texture packs should have a version number or last updated date; similar to the mad packs so you know when they get updated and can download the newer version.
I do like this idea especially since I already version number my packs.
However with the talked about move to the Curse client I think they already do that. *Not sure though.
For packs like Faithful, this could be a bit of an issue if I ever started pushing updates to the launcher at the same speed I push them to Github. People would constantly be seeing update warning for little texture changes.
Anyways, I pulled this from a chat with Jaded:
As for updates, the launcher does not tell people when a new Resourcepack version is available, I tweet it and the resourcepack creators tweet it or post it on forum threads.
