[development] Node reference in core?

[Karl Giesing]

Hello, all. This is Karl, aka Karlheinz, the developer for the Discogs module.
I'm trying to work with Zirafa, author of the Pushtape module, to come up with a centralized discography framework for Drupal. (I'm also going to see if the Spotify module wants to get on board with this.) We have, however, run into a snag.
His module is track-centered, whereas mine is album-centered. In order to have tracks and albums as separate nodes, we need to have some sort of reference to multiple track nodes from an album node.
Furthermore, we also need the ability to add Track nodes as we are creating an Album node - that is, we need the ability to create multiple nodes, and their references, all from the single form used to create an album. What should NOT happen is that the user has to create each track individually before they create an album that has those tracks - this is a workflow nightmare. (And it's currently how Pushtape works.)
There are currently three D7 modules used to create node references: References, Entity Reference, and Relation. References is the only one not currently in beta - and it's being depricated in favor of one of the other two. Furthermore, as far as I can tell, none of the above allow you to create the references unless the nodes already exist.
I had hoped that the new Fields API in D7 would have included this functionality, but alas it was not the case. (I was actually very surprised at this; frankly, I believe it should have been in Drupal since day 1. A "node" is just a piece of information, after all, and there's a reason everyone uses a "relational" database for information.)
So, I'm wondering if there isn't the possibility of moving this functionality into Drupal core. If not for D7 (which seems like a lost cause), then for D8 at the very least.
In the meantime, is there any one of the three aforementioned node reference modules that the folks at Drupal core think is most promising? We absolutely, positively need this functionality, and we don't want to have to change dependencies - again - due to issues with third parties.
p.s. I've been reading all the posts about re-purposing this list to include module developers. We've had this conversation before, but if it's being considered again, I am all for it. The support list is ABSOLUTELY NOT useful in any way for us, and there is currently NO appropriate mailing list for module developers to use.
In the meantime, I've been using the Module Development and Code Questions section of the forum, when I need to.http://drupal.org/forum/4

-Karl. 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/development/attachments/20120301/8ec617ca/attachment.html