Re: A riskier alternative to "latest"?

[DJ Delorie <dj at delorie dot com>]

> This is similar to a lot of other projects so I don't think this is a
> very radical concept.  The only thing I don't know about is what to name
> the directory, actually.  Is "development" clear?  Some projects call it
> "dontuse" or "new", too.

DJGPP uses "alpha" and "beta" subdirectories for stuff like that; we
don't get too many complaints (I don't remember *any*), but the
install tools don't scan those directories anyway.  They key is to not
install the test versions *by default*.

If setup doesn't go more than one directory deep, we could add
alpha/beta directories within each package.  Or, we could add
alpha/beta siblings to latest; setup should ignore those also.

I think the concept of alpha/beta is pretty well understood.  I don't
see why we'd need to invent some other term.  Alpha is for things that
probably won't work, beta is for things that probably will work,
latest is for things that do work.

Another option is to allow tagging individual tarballs with "risk
factors".  To do this we'd need either a rock-solid versioning/naming
scheme, or start using some master config file for setup to read, so
that setup could prompt for "do you want to try experimental
versions?"  and do the right thing.  Of course, we'd need a way to
revert to stable versions if they break.