metadata: fix THE_PACKAGES processing

Actually the issue was worse in general: *_PACKAGES
weren't quoted when put into .base thus resulting
in a potentially broken echo command (silent one).

The macro scheme used was overgeneralized; stuffing
quoting differentiation into it was doable but ugly
(unless one is able to pass an unquoted quote sign
as a function's parameter in some elegant manner),
let's just make it straightforward.
1.0.1-alt0.M70T.1

- important bugfix: THE_PACKAGES weren't getting through to .base
  (backported from 1.1.14)
gear-store-tags