Joomla 1.6 Extensions and Permissions Conformance

I've been thoroughly enjoying Joomla 1.6 as I've been in the process of building out some sites and assessing the new version.  Of course, I'm always watching for new or updated Joomla 1.6-compatible extensions, and it's great to see many of my "must have" extensions quickly falling into place.

However, to date I've noted various levels of application of the Joomla 1.6 permissions system within components.  In particular, some third-party extensions vary in how they present permissions in the interface, some don't have any component-level permissions control at all (missing the "Options" button), and some only plan to implement this as a feature of the paid version of their extension.

I can imagine and appreciate the complexity of building in permissions support "down through the tree" of individual categories and elements managed by an extension, but how tough is it to just drop in the Options for the overall component?

In particular, if I need this functionality (permissions control at the top level of the component), but it's not supported by the extension ...

... Could I hope to find a 1.6-compatible extension for permissions management?  I don't think one's available for 1.6 yet, and I wonder if anyone will bother to develop and release it, given 1.6's built-in permissions and ACL.

... Could I bolt this capability on myself by tweaking the extension's code?  Remember, I'm just looking to enable this at the top level of the component.

I've poked around some of the Joomla code structure trying to figure out where/how this gets defined, but I thought I'd ask if anyone could point me in the right direction.  If you have any advice for a file or directory area to start looking at (perhaps for a core component), please share it here -- I'd really appreciate it!

Of course, if anyone has any thoughts on the bigger issue of 1.6 Permissions conformance for third-party extensions, I'd welcome them too!