Why "thank god"? I'm not trying to be snarky or rude, I'm wondering what's so bad about it?
I think the idea of unionfs should be in a kernel.
I don't know how good aufs is (nor do I care really), but if it's not in mainline/upstream then it'll never be taken seriously.
If you ask me to start building custom kernels to support your stuff, then I'm not going to like you. :-)