https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40363
--- Comment #4 from Carter Young ecyoung@grandecom.net --- (In reply to Sebastian Lackner from comment #3)
1.7.x/1.9.x are development branches of Wine, not stable branches. Besides that, I have no idea what you are complaining about. I am not aware of any other version not available on Gentoo because of the lack of a Staging patchset.
I apologize ob that point, as I had not checked the WineHQ stable notification for a LONG TIME.
We never announced that we would provide Staging patchsets for stable versions because, as pointed out above, it is a contradiction. If people want experimental features, then they can use Wine Staging - if they prefer stability over new features, then they can use the stable version of Wine without Staging.
Please note that 1.8.0 is basically both "stable" and "development" at the same time. Afterwards, the development branch continued with 1.9.0 (for which we provide Staging patchsets) and the stable branch with 1.8.1 (which only gets minor bugfixes to increase stability).
I would like to install a more recent stable version, without the staging USE Flag. The issue is that from 1.8 on, at least in Gentoo, the staging USE Flag will be an option, meaning for every version we mark stable, a staging patchset WILL BE required, for example, 1.8.3 is marked stable, and the staging USE Flag is enabled.
Let me ask it this way: Say you decide that Wine Stable will become 1.9.5. At the moment 1.9.5 is chosen, is the staging patchset removed? If it is removed, our package in Gentoo breaks, as the staging flag existed before the decision.