[arch-general] Official policy on beta releases in mainline repos

[Troy Engel]

If this is on the wiki or elsewhere I've missed it, please feel free
to direct me there. What is the official policy on beta releases in
the mainline repositories? Is there one?

$ pacman -Ss | grep ^[a-z] | grep beta
core/grub 1:2.02.beta2-5
extra/foobillard++ 3.42beta-5
extra/frozen-bubble 2.2.1beta1-6
extra/hddtemp 0.3.beta15.52-2
extra/libcaca 0.99.beta18-2 [installed]
extra/libunicodenames 1.1.0_beta1-1
extra/tsocks 1.8beta5-7
extra/ttf-tibetan-machine 1.901-6
community/echat 0.04beta1-4
community/fatrat 1.2.0_beta2-14
community/freerdp 1.2.0_beta1+android9-1
community/krecipes 2.0beta2-6
community/krusader 2.4.0beta3-5
community/sniffit 0.3.7.beta-15
community/vbindiff 3.0_beta4-4
community/wqy-microhei 0.2.0_beta-6
community/wqy-microhei-lite 0.2.0_beta-6
community/xmove 2.0beta2-6

I'm specifically concerned about the choice to release betas of
freerdp into mainline and was trying to find out what the policy was
and when it was deemed OK to release betas. (as with grub). I am not
finding the reason for a freerdp upgrade documented to use the betas,
a lot of us use this tool for work and can't afford to deal with the
hits of beta software in a critical utility.

thx,
-te

[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=190317
[2] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/42890