Is running the latest daily really the only way to get an up to date and usable version of chirp? Is it really all that impossible to make a versioned release every now and then?
It's certainly not, but it's not very useful either. Since we don't merge things that we know are broken, there's no need to maintain a stable branch. That makes the main branch the most stable one all the time. That means you're free to grab a snapshot at any time, package it for your distro and repeat in whatever your desired interval is. If you'd like to build some automation around it for your distro like I have for the PPA, let me know and I'll be glad to help do some signaling for you to trigger off of.
When we did maintain stable versions, the distros didn't reliably update those either, so I don't really see the point. Ubuntu base still has 0.3.1 in it from three years ago, apparently :)
It would certainly be easier on your non-ubuntu users if their distros had a fighting chance.
A couple years ago, I did a poll looking for people to indicate what linux distros they cared about so I could focus whatever time I had on things that were likely to generate value for people. 99% used an ubuntu or debian variant. I feel like we're doing the best for everyone if 99% run ubuntu and get the latest bug and feature updates the day after we release them.
--Dan