No variant.json in rez-pip installed packages

Hi there,
I appreciate that hashed variants solves a problem with nested folders for variants or variants with difficult characters. However, as far as I can see there is no way by eye to work out which variant is in which folder. What if when the package is created, a text file was created in the folder indicating which variant it was?
Such as a file called variant.txt which could contain the variant string ['platform-windows', 'arch-AMD64', 'python-2.7'].
This would make things easier to manage.
Could hashed variants be optional? As we have been using the path mapping to simplify our variant paths anyway. I've noted that variant_shortlinks might be a way to create user friendly links, but since are servers use an Isilon cluster, with a mixture of windows and Linux machines, symlinks don't work.
What do you think?
James

Start by tracing package creation and the hashed-variant handling in Rez, then review how path mapping and variant_shortlinks currently work. The scope needs a decision between adding a variant metadata file, making hashed variants optional, or supporting another readable mapping; done should include an agreed behavior that works across Windows and Linux without symlinks.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.