When do experimental packages turn stable?

Hauke Fath writes:

 > My question: What is the relationship between the two directories?

An "experimental" package is uploaded when the maintainer of the
particular package says it's ready to be uploaded.  It's a beta test
area; Lisp packages tend to interact with each other in very complex
ways, and refactoring bugs (disappearing variables that other packages
use, and so on) are often caught soon after a release, but aren't
always fixed quickly.

 > When do "experimental" packages move to /pub/packages?

In theory, when the project's package czar (currently Norbert Koch)
decides to.  At present we're in a space bind.  I need to get some
round tuits, make sure that everything is backed up (I had a system
crash a while back so I *should* have copies of everything
*somewhere*, but I need to find them -- they're on disconnected disks
that I need to find a place to mount), and then once I make space
everything currently in experimental will move to stable.

 > And, with my pkgsrc hat on: Under which circumstances would it be
 > fine to package the content of /pub/beta/experimental/packages?

Right now, everything has gotten all the beta testing it's going to
get, so you can just package it from experimental.  Once the packaging
workflow restarts, you'll have to make a decision about how much risk
you're willing to take on behalf of your users.  Probably Norbert
<[email protected]> has the best idea of how often bugs that require a
repackaging before moving to stable occur.

HTH

Steve