I don't remember who I was chatting with, but the stable-1 pointer came up and it reminded me that I don't care for it. :)
As a community we use the "stable" pointer as a way to guide downstream folks who don't want to be actively engaged in HBase internals. It's supposed to be a guidepost that says "this is our best bet on you having a low-pain experience." Right now our stance is that's a HBase 2 release. What purpose does "stable-1" serve? I previously was an advocate for it as a way to say "hey if you have to stay on HBase 1 then use this one." But as our collective effort on HBase 1 releases has waned I think the answer to that increasingly becomes "use the latest HBase 1" because we effectively can't sustain more than a single branches-1 based release line. AFAIK no one is prepared to do that kind of extensive vetting of a branch-1 based release that would e.g. justify having folks stick to 1.4.z releases instead of updating to 1.6.0 when it comes out. I'm happy for various HBase 1.y lines to keep going so long as there are RMs willing to step up. I still think we should have monthly 1.4.z releases through June. But if we get into a regular cadence of releases off of branch-1 I'd rather we not provide folks with a mixed message about wether or not they'd be better of going to those newer release lines. What do folks think? Should we just delete the stable-1 pointer?
